Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole (3 page)

Earthquakes occur, and if they are under the sea they generate tsunamis, because there are tectonic plates that sometimes slip. Would it not have been better, therefore, for God to arrange the earth to have a solid crust all over? The answer is, No, it wouldn't. The gaps between the plates enable mineral resources to well up from deeper down and replenish the face of the earth. Without this happening, life would not be able to keep going very long.
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So the very great good of life on earth actually requires that there be earthquakes.

These three theodicies are merely examples. Many more have been devised. Of course, all three have obvious limitations. The free will theodicy, for example, explains, at best, only the evils caused by our own free actions. It fails to explain natural evils, such as the pain and suffering caused by diseases and natural disasters. However, despite their individual limitations, many theists believe that such theodicies can collectively, if not entirely solve the evidential problem of evil, then at least bring it down to manageable proportions, so that it can no longer be supposed to deal a fatal blow to traditional Theism.

The Evil God Hypothesis

But is this true? Consider a rather different god hypothesis. Suppose there is a maximally powerful, all-knowing creator. Only this creator is not maximally good but maximally evil. His cruelty and malice know no bounds. Call this the evil god hypothesis.

How plausible is the evil god hypothesis? Almost everyone dismisses it out of hand, of course. It's a patently ridiculous suggestion.
But why? Many of the standard arguments for the existence of God, such as that the universe must have a designer, or that it must have a first cause, or be the product of a necessary being, actually have nothing to say about the moral properties of this cosmic designer/creator/necessary being. They support the evil god hypothesis just as much as they support the good God hypothesis. So why dismiss the evil god hypothesis out of hand?

There is an obvious reason, of course: the evidential problem of good. Yes, the world contains much evil. But it also contains a great deal of good. Far too much good, in fact, for this world to be the creation of a maximally powerful and supremely evil being. Why, for example, would an evil god:

• Bestow upon some individuals immense health, wealth, and happiness (surely he'd rather, say, torture them for all eternity with a red-hot poker)?
  
• Put natural beauty into the world, which gives us pleasure?
  
• Allow us to perform selfless deeds, which are both a moral good and reduce the amount of suffering that exists?
  
• Give us children to love who love us unconditionally in return (for an evil god despises love)?
  
• Give us beautiful, healthy, young bodies (rather than say, ugly, painful, arthritic bodies)?
  

Notice how the evidential problem of good mirrors the evidential problem of evil. If you believe in a good god, you face the challenge of explaining why there is so much evil in the world; if you believe in an evil god, you face the challenge of explaining why there is so much good.

Notice that, just as theodicies can be constructed to try to explain away the problem of evil, mirror theodicies can be constructed to try to explain away the problem of good. Here are three examples:

Reverse free will theodicy.
Evil god could have made us puppet beings that always did the wrong thing, so that we always acted to maximize pain and suffering. But then the world would have lacked one of the most profound and important forms of evil—moral evil: evil freely done of our own volition for which we can be held morally responsible. For an evil god, a world lacking moral evil is seriously deficient. So evil god cut our strings and set us free. As a result, we sometimes choose to do good—we sometimes selflessly help each other, for example. But such goods are outweighed by the moral evils free will allows. Which is why evil god allows them.

Character-destroying theodicy.
This is a vale, not of soul making, but of soul destruction. Evil god wants us to suffer, do evil, and despair. Why does evil god create natural beauty? To provide some
contrast.
To make what is ugly seem even more so. If everything were uniformly ugly, we wouldn't be tormented by it half as much as if it contained some beauty. Contrast also explains why a few enjoy lavish lifestyles and success. Their happiness is designed to make the rest of us suffer even more: from jealousy, resentment, and frustration. No one can rest content (and remember, too, that deep down, even the few on which these gifts are bestowed not
really
happy). Why does evil god allow us to have children to love and who love us unconditionally in return? Because it's only if we really care about someone that we can really be made to worry agonizingly about them. Only parents know the depths of anguish and suffering that children bring. Why does an evil god give us healthy young bodies? Because we know that our health and vitality will be short-lived, that we will either die young or else slowly wither. By giving us something wonderful for a moment, and then gradually pulling it away, an evil god can make us suffer even more than if we had never had it in the first place.

Reverse laws of nature theodicy.
In order for us to have the opportunity to act on our environment, and interact with each other in it, the universe must be regular and law governed. It must be predictable what will happen if, say, I strike this match. I need to know a flame will result. If, when a match is struck, it sometimes results in a flame, but sometimes a cherry, sometimes disappears, sometimes causes my eyebrows to grow very fast, and so on—if, in short, the behavior of the physical world were random and chaotic—then there would be no point in my trying to do anything. Laws are required for the possibility of my being able to perform morally evil actions, such as the action of my deliberately lighting a match and burning down a family's house while they are sleeping inside it. True, these same laws have some good consequences—they allow us to do good deeds, for example. Moreover, as Polkinghorne reminds us, the tectonic plates that produce the evil of earthquakes also produce certain goods, such as minerals that help replenish life. However, the pain, suffering, and, most important, the moral evil the laws of nature allow more than outweighs such goods.

How effective are these reverse theodicies? Most of us recognize that they are not effective at all. The fact is, the amount of good that exists clearly
is
sufficient to place beyond reasonable doubt the conclusion that there is no evil god, notwithstanding such ingenious and convoluted attempts to try to explain it away. But if it remains fairly obvious that there is no evil god, given the available evidence, why isn't it equally obvious that there is no good God either? If belief in an evil deity remains patently ridiculous given the amount of good there is in the world, why should we consider the good god hypothesis to be significantly more reasonable—at the very least not unreasonable—given the staggering amounts of evil the world contains? I consider this to be one of the most serious challenges facing belief in God.

I don't claim the challenge cannot be met. However, personally, I cannot see how. While there are some interesting asymmetries between the good and evil god hypotheses,
⁵
they are not, it seems to me, anything like enough to render one hypothesis significantly more reasonable than the other. Perhaps there is some sort of intelligence behind the universe—a first cause, fine-tuner, necessary being of some sort. But surely we have overwhelming evidence that, even if there is, it is not an evil god. Ditto a good God.

Two Misconceptions about the Problem of Evil

It's worth dealing with two common misconceptions about the problem of evil.

First, some theists dismiss the evidential problem of evil on the grounds that it is too “impressionistic.” Precisely this response was made to my presentation of the problem of evil in a contribution to a recent book. The reviewer, David Hart, said that such objections to Theism were “incorrigibly impressionistic.”
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Similarly, in a radio conversation with me, scientist Denis Alexander responded to the evidential problem of evil by saying, regarding the huge amounts of seemingly pointless suffering we observe, that “we simply are not in a position to measure those kind of things [quantities of evil], we can measure certain things in science and so forth.”
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Alexander's suggestion seemed to be that
if we cannot scientifically measure suffering, it cannot constitute strong evidence against a hypothesis.

Now, it is true that pain and suffering are hard to measure and quantify with great precision. There is no calibrated scale on which we can place pain to measure exactly how much there is, for example. It is undeniable that estimations of quantities must, to
some
extent, be “impressionistic.”

But does it follow that there isn't clearly enough of it to rule out the hypothesis that there exists a good God? Surely not. After all, notice that good cannot be weighed on a calibrated scale either. Our assessment of how much good there is must be no less “impressionistic.” Yet, despite that, we know there is more than enough to establish beyond reasonable doubt that there's no evil god. So why can't we know that there's more than enough evil to rule out the good god hypothesis as well?

In fact, if it were true that quantities of pain and suffering inflicted cannot be used as good evidence because they cannot be “scientifically” measured, then we would not be able to convict someone of, say, inflicting great pain and suffering on a defenseless animal. Suppose that in response to compelling evidence of the appalling torture the accused inflicted over a long period of time, the judge said: “Ah, but we can't
scientifically measure
this pain and suffering, can we? In which case, the prosecution's evidence is hopelessly impressionistic and thus inadmissible. Case dismissed!” Clearly, that would be a perverse verdict. The same is true of the verdict that hundreds of millions of years of appalling suffering can't count as good evidence against the existence of God just because it, too, can't be “scientifically” measured.

A second common misconception about the evidential problem of evil as an argument against the existence of God is that it somehow
presupposes
that there is a God. Why? Because talk of things being “good” and “evil” requires that God exist. Such talk only makes sense if there is some objective standard against which good and evil might be gauged—and the only possible standard is God.

This objection is easily dealt with. First of all, note that the problem can be rephrased without using the word
evil.
We can just ask those who believe in God, “If there is a God of the sort you believe in, why does he unleash so much pain and suffering? Surely such a God would not unleash gratuitous pain and suffering, correct?” Second, the objection, as it stands, simply
assumes
that moral talk about “good” and “evil” only makes sense if there's a God. This would need to be shown, and I very much doubt it can. Third, and most important, whether the problem of evil presupposes God is irrelevant, for what the problem of evil reveals is an
internal
inconsistency in Theism. So suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is a God. In that case, there are moral properties, good and evil. Actually, there's quite a lot of evil: far too much, arguably, for there to be a God. So, Theism leads us to the problem of evil, and the problem of evil leads us to see that God doesn't exist. So Theism, if true, is false. And, obviously, if it is false, it is false. So it's false.

The Problem of Nontemporal Agency

Here's a second, rather different objection to belief in
any
sort of creator god, let alone a good one.

Human beings are naturally drawn to explanations in terms of agency (and of course, the H.A.D.D., if it exists, would partly explain why). This is particularly true when we are faced with features of the universe that we cannot otherwise explain (remember the Ouija board example). When we could not explain the movement of certain heavenly bodies across the sky, such as the planets, we supposed they must be, or must be guided by, agents of some sort. Only not mere humans (we are incapable of such feats) but
supernatural
agents. When we could not explain what made plants and flowers grow, we supposed they must be forced up by supernatural agents—fairies or sprites or whatever. When we could not explain why diseases and natural disasters occurred, we supposed they must be the actions of more supernatural agents—witches and demons. When explanations in terms of natural causes and laws are not available, our default setting, as it were, is to switch over to explanation in terms of agency, and, if the situation demands it,
supernatural
agency.

Of course, as science has progressed, many of the phenomena such supernatural agents were invoked to explain have received plausible naturalistic explanations. But there will always be questions science cannot answer (as we'll see in
chapter 2
), including:
Why is there anything at all?
And so, with respect to such questions, it's always tempting to invoke some sort of supernatural agent to do the explaining. God is of course the ultimate supernatural agent.

However, when we invoke a supernatural agent to explain why the universe as a whole exists (and of course, an H.A.D.D. would, again, at least partly explain this powerful temptation), we run into a problem that does not plague the suggestions that there are fairies, witches, and ghosts at work within the universe. The problem is that God, as creator of the spatiotemporal universe—as the instigator of the big bang (which, remember, marks
the beginning of time itself
—there is supposedly no “before” the big bang, only an “after”)—is not himself a temporal being. God did not exist in time prior to the universe, as there was no time for him to exist in. But then the suggestion that there exists such a
nontemporal
agent doesn't make sense.