Answering the Question "Is God Good?"

Peter Singer over at Comment is Free:

In earlier times, when original sin was taken more seriously than it generally is today, the suffering of animals posed a particularly difficult problem for thoughtful Christians. The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes solved it by the drastic expedient of denying that animals can suffer. Animals, he maintained, are merely ingenious mechanisms, and we should not take their cries and struggles as a sign of pain, any more than we take the sound of an alarm clock as a sign that it has consciousness.

People who live with a dog or a cat are not likely to find that persuasive. Last month, at Biola University, a Christian college in southern California, I debated the existence of God with the conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza. In recent months, D'Souza has made a point of debating prominent atheists, but he, too, struggled to find a convincing answer to the problem I outlined above.

He first said that, because humans can live forever in heaven, the suffering of this world is less important than it would be if our life in this world were the only life we had. That still fails to explain why an all-powerful and all-good god would permit it. Relatively insignificant as this suffering may be from the perspective of eternity, the world would be better without it, or at least without most of it.

Comments

[Carlos]

I suppose that, generally, both theists and atheists can agree that compassion and intellectual progress are important components of the human condition. Would we have either without suffering?

You might reply, without suffering we would need neither, and that might be true, here. In that undiscovered country, it might be the bees knees, or even the cost of entry...were faith not the cost of entry, that is :)

[Ed]

There is a possibility (slim though it may be) that God is on a level that is totally incomprhensible to us. Were we on that (admittedly theoretical) level we just might understand more than we do.

[Felix E F Larocca MD]

As I deal with life and death as a part of my professional and personal life, I cannot avoid but thinking of that intangible God that, as an idea, was instilled in our minds by His surrogate, our parents.

Humbly I can only admit. That when in trouble, I do not ask for His help, but for the drive to let me fight my own battles --- whether I win or lose.

As for His meaning, I think that He/She wants not to let us understand his nature well --- lest we become gods ourselves.

[Nick Smyth]

Do we live in a world that was created by a god who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all good? Christians think we do. Yet a powerful reason for doubting this confronts us every day: the world contains a vast amount of pain and suffering. If God is all-knowing, he knows how much suffering there is. If he is all-powerful, he could have created a world without so much of it - and he would have done so if he were all good.

Suppressed premise: suffering is intrinsically evil.

Not an easy thing to demonstrate, actually, given that most people would find a life devoid of all suffering totally abhorrent.

[Jim]

The older I get and the more I think about these things, the more I believe these are questions without answers.

From a religious perspective God's character always comes away unscathed. A human who causes suffering is guilty. But God always knows best.

A human who answers an entreaty to relieve pain with silence is considered cruel. But God's silence is just God's will.

The things we put up with from God would never be acceptable from a man or woman.

[Blunderov]

"suffering is intrinsically evil."

I would say suffering is intrinsically bad. Not evil. Evil is what humans do.Suffering is pain.

Watching someone die incredibly painfully of cancer is not exactly one of "God's" most wonderful gifts to those "he" supposedly loves. The cancer is not evil. But anything that created that cancer or permitted it to occur might well be considered so.

It has been mentioned that "God" might be incomprehensible to us. Quite. It is my own conviction that the concept is entirely incoherent. But in either case we have, along with Laplace, "no need of this hypothesis".

[MissVolare]

Casanova: "The meaning of suffering is the end of suffering."

Me: "Pain is mandatory; suffering, perhaps not."

[Jared]

It is quite evident to me that the beauty of existence and human life is bound up with and cannot be separated from the many daily challenges of existence. Finding food, avoiding predators, overcoming disease - all these activities are what make life vital and interesting. Without suffering, life would be unbearable. Unnecessary suffering is very different, and should be avoided.

[Nick Smyth]

Quite right, Jared, but the thing is that because this kind of inquiry ASSUMES the existence of the traditional God, it must also grant him the final say over what is "unnecessary suffering". We can't pretend to have better access to this information than God does. In fact, if we really are assuming that God exists, then it follows logically that all suffering is necessary (hence Leibniz's theodicy).

[Jared]

Nick,

As an atheist, I was just addressing the question of suffering as an inherent part of existence. I really don't understand how people can believe in a god that answers their prayers but also allows thousands of children to be buried in an earthquake. The position that god just started the Big Bang and then it was a hands-off job is morally defensible, though intellectually bankrupt.

[Chris Schoen]

The Buddhists quite rightly distinguish between pain and suffering, as MissVolare points out. At a certain level, pain is just pain, a certain kind of sensation in the body, whereas suffering is the attachment to that pain, or to its relief.

(I don't mean to speak lightly of intense pain--such as being burned alive in a forest fire; I'm no yogi, and don't even handle headaches well. But even Epicurean Me can detect the difference between pain and suffering in myself, and become aware that often it is the resistance to pain that makes suffering most tenacious.)

But that's a side point. I'm really impressed by the contention of Singer (who I thought was supposed to be something of a heavy hitter), that a "good" God would have made a world more comfortable for him. Which is really another way of saying that a really good God would make a make a world something like a nursery, where nothing bad could ever happen. Or perhaps, just nothing *really* bad, like floods and cancer and forest fires.

It's an understandable sentiment as we helplessly witness the death of hundreds of thousands in Burma and China, as though they were so many gnats. But I cannot see how any serious thinker would prefer complete divine protection from disaster. If the fix is in, why play the game?

[pebird]

The problem I have with Singer isn't his description of god, but his definition of existence.

God certainly does not physically, materially exist. Emotions exist - not as a correlation of brain activity or neurochemical balance - as a affect, a subjective experience. In this dimension, god exists.

Ideas inhabit a different space, as reflections of physical experience or emotional content, but also as loose, fluid constructions and recursive reflections on existence(s) itself - and god appears in that context.

The desire humans have to move god from the mental and emotional into physical existence seems less a need for "proof", but a strategy for social power. Religion as politics by other means.

A god that could be proven would not be much of a god - faith and uncertainty are inextricably linked and seem tied to the human condition that exchanges risk for potential extension. Without death not much would get done in life.

[Jared]

pebird,

"God certainly does not physically, materially exist. Emotions exist - not as a correlation of brain activity or neurochemical balance - as a affect, a subjective experience. In this dimension, god exists"

All this means is that god exists in the imaginations of some people. The same can be said for Santa Claus, who exists as an idea or image in the imaginations of children. I can imagine a unicorn, so unicorns exist, but only as brain impulses, not in reality.

I am quite willing to concede that god exist in the imaginations of some people, but I remain an atheist since god does not exist in reality.

[MattInOz]

Quite right Jared, of course 'god' does not exist except in those minds who create (or inherit) him/her. It is for this reason that instead of seeing the coalescing of the world's people around the 'truth of god' as each discovers him/her, we see the exact opposite: a splintering of the world's people into an ever growing number of cults, a number that is limited only by the number of different imaginations that are out there. Pretty simple really, if one holds to logic.

As for the existence of 'bad' things, in the form of indiscriminate earthquakes for example and 'evil' deeds, in the form of, say Hitler - these have ever stood as unassailable obstructions to the existence of any of the gods thus far described. Feeble attempts to suggest otherwise, along the lines of CS Lewis for example, are pure obfuscation (and painful to watch).

[pebird]

Jared:

Quite right. Note that if you take the strong materialist position, you also accept the classic idealist stance.

You still have to account for "imaginations of some people" with "not exist in reality".

Are imaginations part of reality?

If not, then what are they part of?

And is that a domain of interest?

And if so, what if god exists there?

I believe that the discussion about god is really a discussion about consciouness and being a subject in a material world.

Again, many assert that god exists in material reality, but they can't use material proofs, so we are getting all these perverse, quasi-scientific, intelligent design theories (which are neither designs nor intelligent) as "proofs".

I think it begs the question - obviously god doesn't exist in physical reality, but that is part of the nature and indeed the definition of god.

But regardless, then in what realm does subjectively lie?

If it is not material reality, then what reality is this other universe?

[Jared]

pebird,

If there were no difference between what we can imagine and what is real, then a starving man could eat a delicious meal simply by imagining one.

[Gavin Ryalls]

There is a misconception among atheists that God's existence can be challenged by using the "How can He possibly allow pain and suffering" argument.

It is true that in both Christian and Muslim circles, God is love. But that does not imply that his function is to provide us with unblemished pleasure, free from all harm and pain.

We all have free will (at least the freedom to accept Jesus or not) and atheists are evidence of this. It is people who cause pain and suffering, not God.

[MattInOz]

Gavin,

Go and watch the entertaining interview with Dawkins and Alister McGrath to see McGrath prove my point precisely. Children, tsunamis and this ever-benevolent God don't make a good mix. The problem of evil stands utterly unanswered.

[MattInOz]

Oh, and incidently, God is not love, 'love' is love. Don't unnecessarily dilute the meanings of perfectly good words, just because you require a more slippery and nebulous definition for a dying concept.

[Gavin Ryalls]

MattinOz
You misunderstand the statement regarding love. 'God is love' is a literally true statement meaning that God, by His very nature, is love in its purest and most unadulterated sense. There is nothing nebulous in this at all. It is perfectly understandable to those who have met God. Admittedly, to those that haven't, it must be something of a strange statement.

[Gavin Ryalls]

MattinOz
You misunderstand the statement regarding love. 'God is love' is a literally true statement meaning that God, by His very nature, is love in its purest and most unadulterated sense. There is nothing nebulous in this at all. It is perfectly understandable to those who have met God. Admittedly, to those that haven't, it must be something of a strange statement.

[MKD]

Arguments against the existence of God have been put forward over many centuries. The defenses offered by adherents of Christianity have not changed since my introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the 1950’s. The thought below may be no more than a wrinkle on the whole issue but I have not seen it elsewhere. It can only have been articulated in the century or so following psychology’s introduction into human culture.

In my work I deal with the consequences of childhood sexual abuse. The results of such abuse are, for most survivors, a life with major impairment and suffering, overcome only with good fortune and great difficulty. The majority of survivors cannot access the long term professional help often required. Consequences can include severe personality and mood disorders, suicide, and a crippling of the ability to form intimate relationships, amongst others. Even more horrifying are the suggestions in some studies that abuse suffered in childhood can lead to an adult who themselves becomes a perpetrator on innocent others.

My thought is as follows. This suffering is not random, as for the person caught in a forest fire, a war or a disease. An explanation that God allows humans free will seems inadequate when dealing with cause and effect. The consequences are predictable, systematic. If God exists, he designed the system to operate as clearly as 1 + 1 = 2.

Surely the designer of such a system cannot be the God of “Pure Love” posited by our monotheistic religions. Rather a “Deus Ludens”, cynically or sadistically laughing. Perhaps something for the proponents of Intelligent Design to consider.

[MatInOz]

Gavin,

You're now claiming to have met the guy?

Did you ask him about that child in the tsunami or did you not watch the video I mentioned...?