| Comments on the Loftus-Wood Debate on the Problem of Evil (Loftus) |
|
COMMENTS ON THE LOFTUS-WOOD DEBATE ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL By John W. Loftus Once again I want to thank David Wood, his wife, Zack, and Pastor Hardaway for their hospitality while my wife and I were in Debates like this one are personally challenging as the participants match their wits against each other, as it is in any intellectual contest between two people. Usually the question on the minds of people who watch a debate is, “who won it?” After a debate the audience will sometimes vote by a show of hands on who won. I’ll not comment on who won the debate. I’ll leave others to judge that. Regardless of who won the debate, I learned some things about the problem of evil in preparation for it, so it was very rewarding to me personally, even if someone thinks I lost. I just hope that it was of a sufficient quality that it was both entertaining and informative to those who see and hear it.
Just because someone is judged to have lost a debate doesn’t settle the issue debated, since others may think the losing side is right for other reasons. Too often people will have the tendency to think that the person who represents their side won the debate simply because they agreed with him, but this doesn’t follow. Others may be critical about the level of scholarship exhibited by the two debaters. But keep in mind that when it’s a verbal debate in front of an audience (versus written debate) there are depths that the debaters cannot effectively explore. It’s harder for an audience to follow a verbal argument compared to a written one where the reader can go back and re-read what is being said. The problem of evil is probably the toughest one for the Christian theist, and Mr. Wood was willing to accept my debate challenge to defend theism at its weakest point. For that I commend him. He presented himself well that night; he was cool, calm, collected, and funny! After the debate he has decided to do his Ph.D. dissertation on it, and for that I’m glad, since it tells me he thinks this problem is one that deserves more attention. He has a bright mind, and he has passion for what he believes. He believes Christianity will win in the marketplace of ideas, like I once did. But I want to forewarn him. In my opinion a deeper study of the problem of evil will challenge his faith to the core. The Moderator Even though the DVD of the debate introduced who the debaters were, I was somewhat taken aback by the introductions given that night by Dr. Larry Hatab, the moderator. I was told he was given introductory information about me, and he personally knows Mr. Wood, but after he introduced us no one would know much of anything about the two debaters. To know more about my credentials one can visit my Blog, which includes my profile, and a part of my deconversion story. Lacking a proper introduction I felt I had to say something about my credentials, and all I could come up with was that I was a former student of Dr. William Lane Craig. It was an ill attempt to state something about myself that Dr. Hatab didn’t do. I did appreciate Dr. Hatab’s questions and his interactions with us both, but then he was on my side. It just must’ve been too hard for him to disagree with Mr. Wood, like he did, and restrain himself from entering the debate. Yet, he has the right to interact just like anyone does in the audience. Like I said, I enjoyed his comments, but then I agreed with him. The DVD Production The company that produced the DVD did a superior job with this debate except for two problems. In the first place, they could’ve provided us with microphones in order to eliminate the sounds coming from the midst of an audience of just over 100 people where they were filming. Secondly, for the first 3 ˝ minutes my wife apparently didn’t get the PowerPoint presentation in sync with what I was saying. She didn’t even want to do the slide presentation, but I talked her into it that night rather than getting someone else to do it. I’m also not sure why the production company didn’t show a couple of my early slides. If the production company had decided not to show any slides at all during these first few minutes, it would’ve been better. As it stands, it distracts people watching the DVD from what I was saying, so I think it would be better not to look at the slides during the first 3 ˝ minutes at all. Evaluation of Mr. Wood’s Argument: If you watched the debate I don’t have to rehearse my argument here. So let me concentrate on a review of Mr. Wood’s case. I had anticipated several potential arguments of Mr. Wood and I was disappointed he didn’t use them. I wanted him to lay on the table several good objections to what I was arguing, so I could dispute them. He never specifically said anything that rebutted my argument against the present laws of nature and this so-called fine-tuned ecosystem when compared to a world where there is constant divine maintenance that alleviates natural suffering. Nor did he specifically say anything to rebut my claim that if God is so omniscient we cannot understand his ways, then God should’ve been knowledgeable enough to create differently, especially when we do have a good idea how he could’ve easily done so. For instance, just creating us all as one race would’ve eliminated all race based conflict and race based slavery, as I argued. I had detailed responses ready for about a dozen objections he didn’t bring up, but I guess that’s what happens in any debate, if the debaters are prepared. In a debate format I have no obligation to suggest objections to my own position and then to argue against those very objections. I only need to deal with the particular objections my debate opponent puts forth. [After this debate I decided to revise my book to include all of this material, since I didn’t want this additional research to go to waste]. Mr. Wood presented three main arguments in his opening statement: ONE) He mentioned that there were several Theodicies that offer plausible explanations to various evils. He only specifically mentioned the Free Will Defense and the Soul-Making Theodicy. He argued that free will explains some suffering, although he admitted not all of it. He also argued that suffering produces believers and builds souls. But he never developed these into arguments that could show why the intense suffering that I was focusing on is specifically explained by them, in my opinion. My point was to ask why there is so much intense suffering in our world, especially when there easily could’ve been less. And neither theodicy says anything at all about animal pain, which I also noted. He argued that there are more important things than pain and pleasure, but my argument was about why there is so much pain in our world. He argued that suffering builds character, but I countered that all of the specific characteristics learned from suffering are strangely irrelevant in a heavenly bliss where there is no suffering. I had also provided many examples of people who were broken and destroyed because of intense suffering, like those who suffered under Joseph Mengele, or Robert, the paranoid schizophrenic, who believed Satan was going to make him kill his daughter, or the lives lost due to natural disasters like the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. Mr. Wood argued that suffering sends us to God (this was the point of his Wizard of Oz analogy). Mr. Wood actually suggested how I would answer this objection of his. He said, “I know that John’s response will be, ‘that doesn’t justify all suffering’”, even though he went on to admit ‘I’m not saying that it does.’” So where in this debate does he offer a justification for all of the intense suffering in this world? I’m arguing with Andrea Weisberger, whom I quoted in my concluding statement, that “any proposed solution to the problem of evil which does not account for all kinds of evil in the world, both moral and natural, is deficient in some way, since evil is then not shown to be necessary. And if some evil is not necessary, God’s goodness and/or power is called into question.” [Suffering Belief: Evil and the Anglo-American Defense of Theism (Peter Lang, 1999), p.102]. The fact is, I had already answered his Wizard of Oz analogy in my opening statement when I argued that all God needed to do to produce more believers is to provide more evidence in nature that he exists, and this stands in stark contrast with Mr. Wood’s assertion that suffering produces more believers. With more evidence God would’ve produced more believers, which in turn would have the added benefit of ending religious diversity on our globe along with all religious wars, Inquisitions, Crusades, and terrorist bombers. I also said that “if God allows…disasters for a greater good, what’s the greater good here? Any paltry benefits to the victims could’ve been gained by other means.” A further response of mine is as follows: If God allows/causes the intense suffering that exists in order to produce more believers, then this is both an ineffective and an immoral means to an end. All God needed to do was to provide more evidence that he exists, as I argued. By contrast, intense suffering causes many people to turn away from the theistic God. Besides, the suffering around the globe that produces believers doesn’t necessarily produce Christian believers anyway. They overwhelmingly adopt the religious faith based upon “when and where they were born,” as I argued. The bottom line is that sending suffering to produce more believers is immoral. It’s like saying I should beat my children in order to get them to love me. Mr. Wood made a passing reference to the fall of Adam and Eve when speaking of the Venus Statue (on the cover of the DVD). The supposed fall of man in the Garden of Eden is supposed to account for the sheer amount of our suffering in our world. But this cannot be, since some of it must have been in the garden itself, as Paul Copan has argued in That’s Just Your Interpretation (Baker, 2001, pp. 150-152), including the fact that the Biblical God created humans as meat eaters, despite Genesis 9:3. The whole story is mythical in nature anyway, much like one of Jesus’ parables. But even if the Genesis story describes a real event, as I said, God would’ve known in advance he hadn’t provided Adam and Eve with enough evidence to believe that if they disobeyed the consequences would be so devastating to them and to their descendents. If they had known for sure they never would’ve sinned, as I argued. I also stated in a different context that the purported punishments are far worse than the crimes. Their crime was not rebellion, but curiosity, selfishness and ignorance—the very things God created in them. In Richard Gale’s words: “The whole idea of a deity who is so vain that if his children do not choose to love and obey him he will bring down all sorts of horrible evils on them and their innocent descendents is horrendous.” [The Evidential Argument From Evil, ed., Daniel Howard-Snyder ( While listening and also thinking about how to respond that night, I probably missed the major point of Mr. Wood’s Venus Statue illustration. After watching the DVD I now think it was a good one. James Sennett has said that he is both impressed with the design of the universe, and also unimpressed with it because of all the suffering in it. That being said, what sculptor would design a statute with both arms cut off on purpose, unless he intended to do so? In my opening statement I countered that “the design argument…is undermined by the extent of evil in the world.” That’s about the extent of how I dealt with this objection of his, except that I also said the arguments for the existence of God do not lead to the specific Christian God he worships, and neither does the design (or teleological) argument. Whenever you look at the Venus Statue on the cover of the DVD just think of it as a real woman whose arms had both been cut off by the sculptor/designer. That’s more to my point. Such a sculpture isn’t beautiful at all. It speaks volumes about the sculptor/designer and makes me conclude there is no sculptor/designer. But if there is a sculptor/designer then he is either impotent or uncaring, or unknowledgeable, and that’s my whole point in this debate. Such a sculpture makes the existence of a good, all-powerful, all-knowing God implausible. Mr. Wood later argued that one purpose of this world and the suffering in it, is to establish who should be rewarded in heaven, but I argued that “to say the victims are going to be rewarded in heaven for their suffering can never morally justify why they suffered in the first place, otherwise the final eternal state, even if it’s pleasant for them, only compensates them for their sufferings. This same reasoning could justify us torturing anyone, so long as we later compensated them for their sufferings.” I also argued that “if God has foreknowledge, then why didn’t he just foreknow those who would find him even before creating them, and simply place them in heaven in the first place?...then there’d be no one punished for not finding him.” Mr. Wood didn’t really specify the kind of existence believers will have in heaven, especially with regard to free will. He only said that the freedom they have in heaven “will be different.” But if he had argued for one of the three options that Paul Copan discusses, I was prepared to answer them. He later argued that the world isn’t that bad because it also contains many good things in it, and I never disagreed with him on this, admitting that I’ve never personally experienced much suffering in my life. My argument was based on his belief (not mine) in a good God. Sure there is a lot of good in the world, so long as we are lucky enough to live in TWO) He mentioned “other evidence” like the arguments for the existence of God, and had a whole slide of arguments for God’s existence (which could barely be read). But Mr. Wood never argued for these things. He basically listed them as arguments and demanded that I refute them all before I can see intense suffering as a good argument against the existence of the theistic God. But saying this is a far cry from offering them as arguments. How can I refute an argument if he doesn’t argue for it? If one can get away in a debate by merely listing arguments without arguing for them, then I could have stood up and said, “the problem of evil is an empirical refutation of Christianity,” and then simply sat down. In a debate we must offer reasons and arguments for our position, and this is what Mr. Wood did not do here. This is what I alluded to when I said I never saw any numbered premises for an argument. I did say that when one compares these arguments for the existence of God with the obvious empirical facts of intense suffering in the world, that the empirical facts outweigh any “nebulous” arguments about the existence of God, especially when the particular view of God one adopts is due, as I stated, to “when and where we are born.” I argued that just as G.E. Moore said he was more certain he holds a pencil in his hand than that he doesn’t in spite of some arguments to the contrary, so also the empirical facts of intense suffering, which we can all see, are a refutation of the “less than persuasive” theistic arguments to the contrary. Besides, as I said in my opening statement, the arguments for the existence of God “don’t lead exclusively to theism or to any particular type of theism….Choosing between theistic religions depends additionally on historical evidence, usually coming from a pre-scientific and superstitious people, even though practically anything can be rationally denied in history.” And I never saw how he showed otherwise. Later on I argued that we face a dilemma between the two origin hypotheses before us. I said we all agree that something now exists, even without specifying what that something is. Our dilemma is that something has either always existed forever, or that something popped into existence out of nothing. Either God is simply a brute fact, or this universe is a brute fact. And it seems that whichever choice we make is (psychologically) absurd. I concluded that “such a dilemma throws the arguments for the existence of God in a spiral.” I concluded that “the existence of evil is an empirical refutation of the theistic triad of beliefs,” by which I meant God’s omnibenevolence, or omnipotence, or omniscience. THREE) Mr. Wood argued that in order for an atheist like me to see something as evil I need an objective moral standard to do so, and if I claim to have one my whole argument self-destructs. Dr. Hatab said it best in the crossfire, when he told Mr. Wood, “that’s just false.” Many theists claim there can be no evil without a standard for absolute goodness (God) to measure it against. Paul Copan wrote: “Evil presupposes a standard of goodness by which evil is measured” [That’s Just Your Interpretation (Baker Books, 2001), p. 92]. Others ask, “How do you know a line is crooked without having some knowledge of what a straight line is?” But I countered that the word “evil” here is being used both a) as a term describing suffering, and at the same time it’s being used b) as a conclusion to describe whether or not such suffering is bad, and that’s an equivocation in the word’s usage. The fact that there is suffering is undeniable. Whether it’s bad is the subject for debate based upon theistic beliefs. I was talking about suffering...the kind that turns our stomachs. Why is there so much of it when there is a good omnipotent God? I’m arguing that it’s bad to have this amount of suffering from a theistic perspective, and I may be a relativist, a pantheist, or a witchdoctor and still ask about the internal consistency of what a theist believes. The dilemma for the theist is to reconcile senseless suffering in the world with his own beliefs (not mine) that all suffering is for a greater good. It’s an internal problem for the theist. Clarification Mr. Wood said he didn’t understand my argument with regard to limited free will, and he simply said, “so I’ll move on.” Maybe now that he’s watched the debate on DVD he understands my point, just like I missed the main point of his Venus Statue illustration. Still, let me explain it. It does absolutely no good at all to have free will and not also have the ability to exercise it. Our free will is limited by our age, race, gender, mental capacity, financial ability, geographical placement, and historical location to do whatever we want. I could not be a world-class athlete even if I wanted to, for instance. Therefore, we do not have as much free will as people think. We are limited by our genetic makeup and our social environment in what we can do with our free choices. Therefore, to say free will is such a good thing, as Andrea Weisberger argues, “we should possess it perfectly.” [Suffering Belief: Evil and the Anglo-American Defense of Theism (Peter Lang, 1999), p. 165]. But we don’t. My point was that if free will explains some of the intense suffering in this world when we already have limited choices anyway, then there should be no objection to God further limiting our choices when we seek to cause intense suffering, and doing so in the reasonable ways I’ve suggested, if we concede for the sake of argument the existence of this present world. My point is that the theist believes God can do this just as he purportedly did when he hardened Pharaoh’s heart against Moses. Conclusion With a sore throat I concluded by stating that the evidence against God’s existence is analogous to the evidence there is against people who believe the Holocaust never happened. The empirical evidence is against both of these two beliefs. Just because a majority of people believe a theistic God exists doesn’t change the fact that the evidence is against both beliefs. I argued we should never believe against the evidence when there is evidence against a belief, and there is an overwhelming amount of it in this world. I look forward to reading the thoughts others have about this debate. And I wish David and his wife all the very best in life. He’s got a bright mind. Perhaps he may make a real contribution to this whole issue sometime in the future, who knows? For Wood's review of the debate, click here. --------------------------- A big thanks goes out to several people who commented on earlier drafts of my opening statement. Andrea Weisberger and exapologist both helped me to tweak the exact wording of my statement of the problem. Richard Carrier told me to “think outside the box” about what God could’ve created instead. Jeffrey Jay Lowder informed me about what to expect by way of Mr. Wood’s arguments, and he was right on both of his suggestions (#2 and #3 above). Edward T. Babinski suggested that I should gear my presentation toward Christian theism and not just theism in general. Thanks also go to Joe E. Holman and Daniel Morgan who helped to supply my PowerPoint presentation with a few pictures. While this whole novel approach to the argument was mine, their suggestions, taken together with the material I read in preparation for this debate, helped to make it better. That’s what research entails. Sometimes books help, and other times the authors themselves help. ----------------------------- References I had used several quotes in the debate itself, and I want to identify who said them and where they can be found. Pierre Bayle: “One might as well compare the Godhead with a father who had let the legs of his children be broken in order to display before an entire city the skill which he has in setting bones…” is found in.: Historical and Critical Dictionary (1679) “Paulicians.” The ordering of the world by general laws “seems nowise necessary” to God, is something David Hume argued in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion X-XI. To read more about how the law of predation in the natural world speaks against the existence of a good God, see Quentin Smith’s “An Atheological Argument from Evil Natural Laws,” in The Improbability of God, eds. Michael Martin & Ricki Monnier (Prometheus Book, 2006), pp. 235-249. Paul Draper’s argument can be found in The Evidential Argument From Evil, ed, Daniel Howard-Snyder, (Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 12-29, 175-192. William Rowe’s arguments can be found in a number of anthologies, but the best place is in The Improbability of God, eds. Michael Martin & Ricki Monnier (Prometheus Book, 2006), pp. 250-318. John Beversluis was the one I quoted without mentioning his name: “If the word ‘good’ must mean approximately the same thing when we apply it to God as what it means when we apply it to human beings, then the fact of suffering provides a clear empirical refutation of the existence of a being who is both omnipotent and perfectly good. If on the other hand, we are prepared to give up the idea that ‘good’ in reference to God means anything like what it means when we refer to humans as good, then the problem of evil can be sidestepped, but any hope of a rational defense of the Christian God goes by the boards.” C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (Eerdmans, 1985). David Hume through Philo wrote: “What if I show you a house or palace where there was not one apartment convenient or agreeable, where the windows, doors, fires, passages, stairs, and the whole economy of the building were the source of noise, confusion, fatigue, darkness, and the extremes of heat and cold?” “The architect would in vain display his subtilty, and prove to you that, if this door or that window were altered, greater ills would ensue. What he says may be strictly true. But still you would assert in general that, if the architect had had skill and good intentions, he might have formed such a plan of the whole, and might have adjusted the parts in such a manner as would have remedi ed all or most of these inconveniences. His ignorance, or even your own ignorance of such a plan, will never convince you of the impossibility of it. If you find any inconveniences and deformities in the building, you will always without entering into detail, condemn the architect.” Found in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part X. Voltaire: “The silly fanatic repeats to me ... that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and just in the great Being, that His reason is not like our reason, that His justice is not like our justice. What!? How do you want me to judge justice and reason otherwise than by the notions I have of them? Do you want me to walk otherwise than with my feet, and to speak otherwise than with my mouth?” Philosophical Dictionary, “The Problem of Evil.” John Stuart Mill: “In everyday life I know what to call right or wrong, because I can plainly see its rightness or wrongness. Now if a god requires that what I ordinarily call wrong in human behavior I must call right because he does it; or that what I ordinarily call wrong I must call right because he so calls it, even though I do not see the point of it; and if by refusing to do so, he can sentence me to hell, to hell I will gladly go.” Reproduced in an appendix in Richard Taylor, ed., Theism (Liberal Arts Press, 1957), pp. 89-96. |