Why does God allow human atrocities?

November 4, 2005 8:33 PM

If God exists, and if God is good, then why allow all the atrocities that humans are committing against each other?

I watched Hotel Rwanda, where the victims are being hacked to death. Elsewhere, humans torture, kill, maim, rape and destroy each other everyday. And that's just the stuff that we hear of in the papers & tv. Many more cases may have gone unheard, unreported. I am losing faith.

posted by arrowhead to religion & philosophy (91 comments total)

As silly as this may sound, this post at Waiter Rant is actually quite good at addressing this paradox, or at the very least making an attempt to: The God Who Drowns.
posted by chunking express at 8:38 PM on November 4, 2005

Also, perhaps your understanding of God is too simple. There are plenty of people that don't view God as being a man in the sky who exists to ensure we all live happy lives.
posted by chunking express at 8:42 PM on November 4, 2005

All is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds.

Alternatively, see Demiurge.
posted by meehawl at 8:43 PM on November 4, 2005

I think the general consensus is that we, as mere humans, cannot possibly comprehend God's reasoning behind His every action. Jesus was sent to Earth to suffer for our sins as a show of trust. It allows those who are tormented (emotionally) by the suffering of others to remain faithful because God has suffered along side us mortals (through His son).

There is also the everlasting life after death parable in that those who allow God in their hearts through Christ will rise after death and stand with him in the kingdom of Heaven etc.
posted by purephase at 8:44 PM on November 4, 2005

Or, of course, D) God does not exist.
posted by odinsdream at 8:45 PM on November 4, 2005

why allow all the atrocities that humans are committing against each other?

One answer is that there's no way to do this and still allow human beings choice.

Why would allowing human beings choice be more imporant than avoiding the terrible things that many of them will inevitably do with those choices? Perhaps because without choice, there's no moral development and growth, and God is in that business.

Or, of course, D) God does not exist.

In any case, a God who is omnipotent and whose highest priority is keeping human beings from hurting one another clearly doesn't.
posted by weston at 8:50 PM on November 4, 2005

Well, it's kind of difficult to conceive of a God that is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent at the same time, so maybe God is not one or more of those things. Maybe God is not omnipotent; God created the universe but can't interfere with it. Etc.
posted by ludwig_van at 8:52 PM on November 4, 2005

If God exists, and if God is good, then why allow all the atrocities that humans are committing against each other?

God doesn't allow it. We allow it.
posted by fandango_matt at 8:52 PM on November 4, 2005

Basically, there are 4 arguments I hear from religious people:

• That Satan is responsible for the bad stuff.
• That God has to allow evil to allow us free will.
• That it's our responsibility to make the world right for God, not vice versa.
• That since The Fall, mankind has been living in a state of sin, and the existence of evil is one consequence of that.

Personally, I don't find any of them convincing, but, as they say on TV, 'I report, you decide'.
posted by boaz at 8:52 PM on November 4, 2005

Welcome to the problem of evil. There is no solution to it. There is no getting around it.
posted by Hildago at 8:53 PM on November 4, 2005

Because, like fandango_matt said, we allow these horrible things to happen, because we have free will.
posted by kosher_jenny at 8:56 PM on November 4, 2005

if god exists and is good*, it doesn't necessarily follow that s/he is concerned or interactive. welcome to deism.

*plus these two things are assuming quite a lot already
posted by dorian at 8:57 PM on November 4, 2005

If God knows the future, why did he create / allow the existence of the angel Lucifer, who he knew would become Satan? I always figured the answer was that, just like humans, God does not know the future.

If he does know the future, then how can humans have free will when everything we do is already known? (see here)
posted by banished at 8:57 PM on November 4, 2005

From chunking expresses link:
Because he realized that God was not all powerful. He knew God wouldn’t swoop down and save him from his jailors. He understood there’s no division of sacred and profane, any secular and divine. He saw there’s only one reality and he believed that reality was God. And from within that insight he wrestled with the mystery of suffering.

God, Bonhoeffer would say, suffers with us. He shares in our pain. If you’ve ever been to a child’s funeral you know the only thing you can do is cry. God is like that person weeping in the funeral parlor. It was God who was pulverized when the Towers fell, it was God who burned in the Nazi’s ovens, and it was God who drowned in that nursing home in New Orleans

Wouldn' t that mean that it was God who was operating the oven and it was God flying the planes?

Anyways, man's cruelty to man could be explained just by God allowing free will and disasters by God's willingness to let the world run it's course. Granted, this isn't really a biblical view, since in that book, god definitely meddled in human affairs quite directly.

And that whole thing about us not being able to understand God makes sense too but for some reason it always fails to convince me of God being good. I feel like we are ants and God is a person who built our antfarm and he is only picking and choosing those of us he likes (for a reason we cannot understand) for eternal life. The rest get to perish even though he is completely capable of saving them.
posted by lazy-ville at 9:00 PM on November 4, 2005

You have confused faith in people with faith in god. Whether or not there is a god we do have free will, as fandango_matt says.

It's time to stop wondering why god lets all the problems happen, and start doing whatever you can about them.

This is not me crapping on religion. My point is that faith is irrelevant. If we were all perfect, good and made of love, a lot of things would be different, not just genocidal atrocities.

And by the way, it's not like things are just getting bad now, People have been slaughtering the hell out of one another for millenia. Where has god been all this time? You're losing faith only now? Your faith must have been founded on very little knowledge of history.

It's good to have the intellectual honesty to experience this crisis of faith. I encourage you to follow it through, think it through, do the subject justice in your mind, whatever end you come to. If that end is faith, then it will be worth something. Until now, it seems, it was ignorant, perhaps not thought through.
posted by scarabic at 9:10 PM on November 4, 2005

No one has yet suggested the hypothesis that god is evil.
posted by beth at 9:18 PM on November 4, 2005 [1 favorite]

I always thought it was just long-term planning on god's part. Suppose an orphanage burns down, killing all within. Well, had that not happened, a very long chain of events would have occurred, leading to something even worse happening, perhaps a thousand years hence. Had god nipped it in the bud earlier, by killing off the approrpriate people in the past, something worse would also have happened. So no matter what, poor ol' god's stuck with a quandry: there's no good outcome, so he just does his very best. Doesn't look good from here, but trust me, it hurts him more than it hurts the orphans.
posted by jewzilla at 9:18 PM on November 4, 2005

Banished:

Knowing something isn't the same as being involved in something. If I know that team x will win the superbowl, does that mean I caused it to happen?
posted by meta87 at 9:20 PM on November 4, 2005

meta87: It does if you also happen to be the person who created the Universe.
posted by BackwardsCity at 9:37 PM on November 4, 2005

meta87, my response to that is here.
posted by banished at 9:37 PM on November 4, 2005

Satan: I bet Job will curse you if you stick a snake up his butt.
God: No, I could totally stick two snakes up his butt, and he'd thank me for it.
Satan: What if you killed his family and gave him boils?
God: Still nothing. Maybe I should stick another snake up his butt.
Satan: I bet if you got three up there, he'd really curse you.
God: You're on.
Job: Hey, um... God? God, I've got these three snakes up my butt and I was kind of wondering if it's gonna be, you know, a longterm thing? I mean, I know you killed my kids and gave me boils, even though I'm pious. But three snakes up my butt?
God: DID YOU CREATE THE WHIRLWIND? STFU N00B! PLUS, HERE IS NEW KIDS AND NO MORE SNAKES IN YOUR BUTT! I AM A POWERFUL GOD!
posted by klangklangston at 9:48 PM on November 4, 2005 [2 favorites]

Oh, I totally copied the wrong link... that's my LJ (I swear, it was an accident).

Here's the real link: http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/question/1
posted by panoptican at 9:55 PM on November 4, 2005

Basically, it's because despite the fact that people SAY he's omnipotent, God really sucks at some stuff.

One of those things he sucks ass at is creating functioning, healthy societies.

He plays a mean game of backgammon, though.
posted by twiggy at 9:55 PM on November 4, 2005

Anyone who answers that it's because of human free will also has the burden of explaining why an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god would want to create an evil world with human free will rather than some other kind of world.

But even if I were somehow convinced that it makes sense for such a god to create human free will, I still don't know why God created the very same amount/scope/kind of free will that happens to actually exist in the world as we know it. Free will (assuming you believe in it) inevitably has some limits: we're only capable of thinking and doing a certain finite group of things. So why did God create a human race capable of committing the Rwandan genocide, to use the questioner's example? You can make an analogy to the parent of a young child. The parent does good by allowing the child a significant amount of freedom. That does not mean that a good parent gives the child the freedom to jump off a cliff.
posted by Jaltcoh at 10:09 PM on November 4, 2005

"Suppose an orphanage burns down, killing all within. Well, had that not happened, a very long chain of events would have occurred, leading to something even worse happening, perhaps a thousand years hence."

I would think that if someone were GOD, they would be able to, you know, just have the bad people burn up in individual fires, or make a piano fall on someone, or find some other way to interrupt this terrible chain of of events, instead of burning down an orphanage where some kid lived that was going to grow up to be the doctor who saves baby Hitler. Are you sure you've thought this through?
posted by crabintheocean at 10:11 PM on November 4, 2005

The apologist answer for the existence of the Christian God and your question is:

Free will.

God lets man make thier own choices- if they are good, then they go to heaven. If they are bad, they go to hell.

Religion is bullshit. Atrocities happen because not all humans are rational or care about consequences.

Arthur C. Clark made an interesting prediction - if human behavior (ie., genocides and other atrocities) were broadcast (on TV or whatever) to the rest of the world; rather, if the people who were in the position to commit atrocities know that theyir actions would be broadcast to the rest of humnaity - that they would be more restrained than they otherwise would have been.

Then again, it's also possible that some might be even more "inhumane" knowing that their actions would be broadcast to the rest of humanity...
posted by PurplePorpoise at 10:22 PM on November 4, 2005

I think the flaw lies in the notion that God is "good." When you draw a line down the middle of the universe, with all the "good" things on one side (i.e. things that make human beings happy), everything else is left over as some kind of inexplicable aberration.

In the nondualist view, God is in everything that is. God transcends all our ideas of good and bad. There is no thing that is not an aspect of God. Including plane crashes, wars and the Ebola virus.

The hand that strikes, and the tear that falls, and the hand that dries the tear -- all are God dancing with God.
posted by ottereroticist at 10:30 PM on November 4, 2005

I always thought it was just long-term planning on god's part. Suppose an orphanage burns down, killing all within. Well, had that not happened, a very long chain of events would have occurred, leading to something even worse happening, perhaps a thousand years hence. Had god nipped it in the bud earlier, by killing off the approrpriate people in the past, something worse would also have happened.

Hume responded to that view:

Did I shew 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; you would certainly blame the contrivance, without any further examination. 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: the alteration of one particular, while the other parts of the building remain, may only augment the inconveniences. 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 remedied 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 any detail, condemn the architect.
posted by Jaltcoh at 10:34 PM on November 4, 2005

arrowhead - if you're really interested in what religious thinkers have said on this topic, google the formal term for it - theodicy.

It is in fact a subject that is prevalent in the Bible: it is the lament at the heart of many psalms, the central topic of Job and one of the central topics of Ecclesiastes.

Most of the conventional responses boil down to what has been gone over somewhat here. First, that if humans are to have free will they must necessarily have the ability to do evil. Second, that however horrible, unfair and unjustifiable the state of things here on planet earth seem, there is an ultimate justification on the scale of the universal and eternal. We are like worms or bugs who are largely oblivious to the real scale and meaning of existence.

My own opinion (and I am a devout Christian) is that the former line of reasoning, while interesting to think about, is not really particularly biblical. The bible doesn't say dick about free will. And it provides no answer to catastrophes that do not involve human agency, of course. Though it is interesting to contemplate the fact that in the Genesis story "sin" enters humanity when man and woman eat of the forbidden fruit of the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

There is more substance to the "limited perspective" argument: God's answer to Job's demands for a justification for his innocent sufferings is fundamentally "I'll explain that to you when you explain the majesty and wonder of all creation to Me" (though Job contains subtelty and depth that reward thoughtful reading).

But in the end, I think this question necessarily persists. It is the central theme of Christianity. One of Christ's final exclamations on the cross is a quote from a psalm, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It is the outcry of any person who suffers in spite of their faith in a God who is supposed to be both good and just.

Personally I don't look for comfort or justification in an intellectual rationalization of an omnibenevolent God with a world that clearly contains evil. I maintain my faith simply that despite the limitations of my ability to hope, there is still some ultimate benefit to my not just throwing my hands up and turning my back on everything. None of us can personally impact, in a significant way, evil and injustice on the global scale. But every one of us can do real work to ameliorate the suffering of real people in our own lives and communities. In the Gospel Christ suggests that his followers would find him without even realizing it, when they were serving the needs of the least among them. What you may be feeling is not the loss of faith but the assertion of what faith demands.
posted by nanojath at 10:36 PM on November 4, 2005 [1 favorite]

And that's just the stuff that we hear of in the papers & tv.

1. Individuals are at fault for their own individual actions. The ability to choose puts blame on ourselves for our own poor choices. Blaming God for your misfortune has the same credibility as saying "The devil made me do it," as an excuse to get out of a crime you committed. People are also responsible for their own inaction, such as not paying attention to factual truths or the laws of physics. God didn't make that truck hit you, you just weren't looking.

2. This is not Eden/Paradise. Mankind was kicked out of Eden a while back, and must work to survive. The sacrifice of Christ covers everything after death, not so much before it. Peace/joy/etc are not reasons to trust in Christ, they are side effects. If you trust in Christ for joy, you're seeking Him for the wrong reason, and not listening to what He has said.

If I gave you a parachute and claimed it would improve your airline flight, you'd notice that it's hard to sit in the seat with it on. Other passengers might laugh at you with a parachute on. If a flight attendant spilled coffee on you, you might likely throw down the parachute in disgust because your flight had not been improved. However, if I told you to wear the parachute because you had to jump later before the plane crashed, the seat, the laughter of passengers, and spilt coffee are only insignificant details, and if anything, may prompt you to clutch the parachute tighter and anticipate the end with better confidence. Christ is the parachute, and prevents your punsishment of Hell, by taking it upon himself in your place. God/Christ is not in the business of making your life easier.

3. Your basis of what is good or bad is based on non-God subjects; you are losing faith in a god you have invented or believed simply from things you have heard, rather than read the actual text. The fact that you are even aware of a good/badness is because of the standard of righteousness, or the law.

Righteousness is the standard of goodness God requires for heaven. 'For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.' (Romans 10:3); 'For God made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us; that we might be made the righteousness of God, through Christ.' (2 Corinthians 5:12).

Just as in #1, you have a choice. You can opt to reject Christ after having known about it, or reject the plea. Does disbelief in trucks make trucks nonexistent? Try that on the freeway sometime. If you have heard the warning about Hell, know how to get out of it, and end up there, who is to blame? Your opinion about Hell doesn't matter (inventing your own standards again), it'll still be there.

Consider me a man be the roadside with a sign reporting the bridge is out. It is up to you to stop driving, or keep going. Having clearly known the bridge was out, you can only blame yourself for sliding off the pavement, dashing against the rocks in a fireball and drowning in the river below. Or, you could have heeded the warning, and stopped. Claiming that God shouldn't have put the gorge there in the first place seeks to selectively disregard possibility that self could be at fault, and even inadvertently deny that one even has the ability to make sound decisions. Heed the warning, stop the car.

In the review of your life at judgment day (at which point those who trust Christ as compensation for their disobedience and inadequacy for being righteous will be exempted), having read this response will inevitably arise. 'But I say unto you, every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.' (Matthew 12:36); 'For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and hid, that shall not be known,' (Matthew 10:26); 'The Lord is not slack (lenient, - ed.) concerning his promise, but is long-suffering (patient) toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.' (2 Peter 3:9).

According to scripture noted above, God desires for us to obey him and live peacefully, but it is according to our own choices that make the difference. Having known a hurricane was coming and opting to stay despite the demanded evacuations, how is God at blame for one's own decision to stay put and be harmed? Did they just not believe in hurricanes? Whether we understand the purpose of Hell doesn't matter -- but having been warned that it does and having been given specific and complete instructions of how to avoid it by a simple trust and prayer, how can anyone blame God for falling into it?
posted by vanoakenfold at 10:47 PM on November 4, 2005

"Why, only last week in Texas, he dropped a whole church roof on the heads of 34 of his worshippers just as they were groveling through a hymn."

- Red Dragon

It doesn't have to be human on human atrocities. Try going to the funeral of five little kids killed in a house fire and tell me there's an omnipotent God.
posted by CunningLinguist at 10:52 PM on November 4, 2005

Yes, I did forget the ever-popular STFU OR BURN IN HELL argument when I made my list, didn't I?
posted by boaz at 10:56 PM on November 4, 2005

God lets man make thier own choices- if they are good, then they go to heaven. If they are bad, they go to hell.

None of which is in the bible (after your hyphen), the very place from which we find evidence of Him. You don't go to heaven if you are good, you go to heaven if you are all good and no part evil. One slip up and you're out. Who can get in, then? None, but Christ. And Christ took our punishment on himself, canceling out our debt, so that we can enter. The reason Christ is 'the only way' is because he was the only man perfect under God's law and thus the only man ever to actually deserve heaven. Pretty much every other religion uses the good/bad ratio, except judeochristianity. It is also the only religion under which the path to heaven has been paid for by the deity himself, under little effort of one's own. All the rest, you have to work for it. There will undoubtedly be many of what we would consider murderers in heaven, and many of what we would consider upstanding citizens in hell, because the sin penalty has been forgiven in those that trusted it so, and not in those who strove for their own standard of goodness without heeding the warning.
posted by vanoakenfold at 11:29 PM on November 4, 2005

Try going to the funeral of five little kids killed in a house fire and tell me there's an omnipotent God.

Try using that excuse when the arson investigator calls you up asking why you left all those gasoline cans, matches, and propane tanks lying around in the presence of children. There are perfectly explainable reasons things happen, and it is only in the eyes of the frustratedly blind who grasp for the air to find blame instead of examining themselves.
posted by vanoakenfold at 11:33 PM on November 4, 2005

God kicks puppies.
posted by twiggy at 11:38 PM on November 4, 2005

beth writes "No one has yet suggested the hypothesis that god is evil."

beth: meehawl kind of did. That meehawl is a sharp, sharp guy.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:40 PM on November 4, 2005

"Consider me a man be the roadside with a sign reporting the bridge is out. It is up to you to stop driving, or keep going. Having clearly known the bridge was out, you can only blame yourself for sliding off the pavement, dashing against the rocks in a fireball and drowning in the river below."

Does anyone else notice how much christian logic sounds like Speed Sedution patterns?
posted by crabintheocean at 11:55 PM on November 4, 2005

vanoakenfold: You won't grant the existence of natural evils? Hurricane Katrina? The tsunami? A bolt of lightning? Surely not every evil has a human choice at its cause.
posted by BackwardsCity at 12:17 AM on November 5, 2005

Maybe God is a Republican and punishes those who don't know how to build wealth to buy their way out of trouble.
posted by any major dude at 12:20 AM on November 5, 2005

It's not me writing this, I am working with a possessed keyboard:

The gist, as my keyboard sees it, is that God is not a force external of us but we all go into the making of "god" -- good, bad, talented, etc. Old-testaments tales explain the forces within god" which, by many accounts, can not be comprehended by our tiny brains. (For Christians, Jesus is a metaphor to drive this point home.) /channeling
posted by Dick Paris at 4:04 AM on November 5, 2005

Interesting how we only get the Christian and deist/agnostic/atheist take on it. That's a pretty limited section of human religious experience.

The Problem of Evil in World Religions: "There are three major religious alternatives in explaining evil, stated by the pantheistic, dualistic and monotheistic religions. Pantheistic religions regard evil as ultimately unreal. Human suffering is a product of spiritual ignorance gathered in previous lives and distributed in the present one according to the dictates of karma. In the dualistic religions, good and evil are two eternal and rival principles. Neither has created the other one and each acts according to its own nature. In the monotheistic religions, evil has a personal identity. It is a being that has fallen from an initial good status as a result of misusing his freedom of will."

arrowhead, I think many of us have lost faith this way. I lost faith because of combining the "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life!" logic with the stories of Job, Hosea, Jeremiah, the genocide of the people who lived in the 'Promised Land' before the Jews got there, the firstborn sons of the Egyptians, etc. Sometimes 'God's plan for your life' is pretty fucking horrible, regardless of your religious fervour. Hang in there.

klangklangston: lovely summary of job!
posted by heatherann at 5:09 AM on November 5, 2005

Well, heatherann pretty much took care of what I was going to say (including the part about losing faith), so let me just say that this discussion is going much, much better than I expected when I held my nose and entered. Well done, AskMeFi.
posted by languagehat at 5:53 AM on November 5, 2005

It's very easy to draw a line at, say, genocide, and say, "That's obviously beyond the pale. That kind of stuff shouldn't happen in the universe if there's a just God."

And at the other extreme, a state of permanent, pure bliss for everyone is empty, isn't it? If that's what anyone really wanted, they'd spend their entire lives on drugs. But if God micromanages enough to not allow genocides, why shouldn't He micromanage enough not to allow murder? Broken bones? Broken hearts? Where does that line get drawn?

I don't think God is particularly concerned with human happiness--or even lack of suffering--but with wholeness that depends on engaging with the world in all its pain and suffering. And I'm perfectly aware that there are lots of times when this can't seem anything but facile and simplistic.
posted by Jeanne at 6:15 AM on November 5, 2005

I would think that if someone were GOD, they would be able to, you know, just have the bad people burn up in individual fires, or make a piano fall on someone, or find some other way to interrupt this terrible chain of of events, instead of burning down an orphanage where some kid lived that was going to grow up to be the doctor who saves baby Hitler.

If you've ever had a teacher that let you grade your own papers, you know that you have to make it look believable. If you're a C student, you can't suddenly get 100. Sure, give yourself from free points, but don't call attention to yourself.

If God made it a policy to only burn up evil doers, pretty soon someone would figure out the score and say, "Hey, you ever notice how nothing bad ever happens to good people, and bad people always die in these horribly embarassing ways?" It calls attention to what God's doing, and comes pretty darn close to evidence that there are supernatural things afoot.

Free will is a Big Idea with regards to many people's notions of God, and that includes the freedom to not believe in God. It becomes harder to choose not to believe in God when he's going around killing ax-murderers and rapists and basically going "Neener, neener, I exist".

People who are rich and famous want to know if their friends would stick by them if they weren't rich and famous. It seems perfectly reasonable that God might want to know who would stick by him if he couldn't prove that he was God.
posted by 23skidoo at 6:50 AM on November 5, 2005

God created a universe with potential. If everyone followed their hearts, set aside the negative and embraced the positive, that is the true potential of benevolence. God made us capable of great goodness, but it is up to us. God did not make you an automaton with a scripted end.

I see God as creating the ultimate MMORPG. Which MMORPG is better, the one that is completely scripted and no matter what you do the results are always the same? Or is it the one where the actors themselves change the outcome?

Spend a moment thinking about how you would create the ultimate online game, and how you as the creator would deal with trolls, player killers, and other bad ilk. Should the creator fix everything? or should the community?

It is my personal view, that the ultimate act of God was to put all of his power and trust into us. This is how I choose to believe. As always ... Your Personal Belief Mileage May Vary from mine
posted by forforf at 7:13 AM on November 5, 2005

BackwardsCity: Evil implies an ill intent. Natural disasters have no intent and are thus not evil. We may associate many of the aftereffects of such events (death, famine, suffering, etc.) with intentional evil, but that does not make them evil. Only humans are capable of "evil".
posted by baphomet at 7:44 AM on November 5, 2005

A lot of the answers are saying that the problem is our assumption that human experience is so important. For instance: "I don't think God is particularly concerned with human happiness--or even lack of suffering--but with wholeness that depends on engaging with the world in all its pain and suffering." That's just one comment; a lot of people have said similar things.

I don't understand why you would think this. I see the point about how God cares about the big picture, which we're unable to comprehened. But why do you think that God is unconcerned about individual suffering? I'll make the analogy to a parent and child again. On the one hand, a good parent should care a lot more about the child's overall development than about the child's particular instances of happiness or sadness. If the child is having a lousy experience getting done with a homework assignment, or a painful experience getting a shot at the doctor's office, that's just a necessary part of the bigger picture. A good parent doesn't give in every time the child cries. But surely there is some threshold beyond which the parent would not tolerate the balance of costs and benefits. The parent would do whatever was necessary to keep the child from being abducted; the parent would not blithely say, "Whatever happens happens; this could be a learning experience." Some things are clearly horrific, with no redeeming value. And so the question is: Why would you think that the Rwandan genocide is somehow redeemed by some greater good?

Baphomet: In the context of the problem of evil, the word "evil" is often used to include all bad things happening in the world. I think the idea is that natural disasters seem to be evil acts of God.
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:04 AM on November 5, 2005

Gods require attention, or the cease to exist.

Gods, like small children and dogs, don't always know what's an acceptable way to gain attention and so they sometimes stray into bad behavior.

Gods, like small children and dogs, learn from positive reinforcement. So, if they do something awful, like claim the lives of innocents, or act in a cruel and arbitrary way, and people start paying attention to them by asking questions like "why does god X allow such things to happen," then the gods will be more likely to repeat said behavior.
posted by Good Brain at 8:39 AM on November 5, 2005

But surely there is some threshold beyond which the parent would not tolerate the balance of costs and benefits.

If humans are like children in their relationship to God, then it is foolish to posit that the things that humans find to be untolerable should be the same things that God finds to be intolerable, just like it's foolish to say that the things that children care about should be the same things that parents care about. Children care about things like getting to stay up late, getting to hang out with friends. They think it's horrible to not get to date. They think it's bad to not have nice clothes. They think it sucks to not have access to a car. All of these things are things which kids care about, and which parents couldn't be bothered with. (Yes, I know that I am generalizing.) Parents want their kids to have fulfilling adult lives, which means they do things for them as children to focus them toward a sucessful adult life. So they don't care about friends and clothes and crap like that, they care about doing well in school, not getting pregnant, and saving money for college.

Human physical suffering could be something that God just doesn't care about, because there are more important things for him to care about. It doesn't mean that he God doesn't know that we think it totally sucks, and it doesn't mean that he don't feel our pain, but it is possible that he is concerned with what he considers to be bigger things, like where our souls will spend the rest of eternity. I mean, when you compare a horrible genocidal death to a never-ending, unresting existence in a lake of fire, it does start to seem a bit unimportant.
posted by 23skidoo at 8:41 AM on November 5, 2005

Indeed, Jaltcoh, it's hard to believe that He marks the sparrow's fall while remaining unconcerned with a six year old being raped and murdered, which is happening, somewhere, right now. This argument fails the simple test of whether or not God could make the world just the tiniest bit better than it is, if He is both all-powerful and all-merciful. Couldn't He fulfill His plan in some other way? It's interesting that some people are better than others at rationalizing this.
posted by Hildago at 8:48 AM on November 5, 2005

Human physical suffering could be something that God just doesn't care about, because there are more important things for him to care about.

If He doesn't care about our suffering, how is He merciful?
posted by Hildago at 8:53 AM on November 5, 2005

If He doesn't care about our suffering, how is He merciful?

Not very?
posted by chunking express at 9:09 AM on November 5, 2005

Welcome to the problem of evil. There is no solution to it. There is no getting around it.

Actually, the consensus of academic philosophers seems to be that Alvin Plantinga (Philosophy, Notre Dame) has solved the problem of evil, from an intellectual perspective if not from an emotional perspective. You can find a summary of his argument here, though you're really better off reading Plantinga himself, if you're interested in the topic.
posted by gd779 at 9:09 AM on November 5, 2005

"Plantinga proposes that perhaps all persons suffer from transworld depravity, that perhaps the actual world, though not the best possible world, is the best one that God could bring about, if he is to respect the free choices of the creatures therein."
posted by gd779 at 9:11 AM on November 5, 2005

If He doesn't care about our suffering, how is He merciful?

Come on, that's like saying "If you'd love me, you'd sleep with me" to your high school girlfriend.

God is merciful if you believe that God allows undeserving sinners into Heaven.
posted by 23skidoo at 9:16 AM on November 5, 2005

the consensus of academic philosophers seems to be that Alvin Plantinga (Philosophy, Notre Dame) has solved the problem of evil

Um, no. The consensus, insofar as it exists at all, is still that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity's moral wishes must still override our moral choices. For example, I am not capable of destroying, say, the city of Detroit just by concentrating real hard. However, that doesn't mean that I don't have free will, only that a particular immoral action is unavailable to me. Similarly, to use the bribery example, neither the power to offer bribes nor the power to accept bribes is required for free will; there will always actions still available even if immoral actions are made impossible. The existence of 'transworld depravity' doesn't help God's case if he created people; after all, if he created people to be depraved and cause other people suffering, then that's not omnibenevolent either.

Another problem, from a more strictly Christian-Islamic standpoint, is the existence of heaven. If heaven exists, then it proves that God not only is capable of creating a perfect world without suffering, but that he already has. Therefore, the protestations of its impossibility in this one become rather obtuse.
posted by boaz at 9:53 AM on November 5, 2005

OTOH, both the theory of God as creator of mankind and the existence of heaven are Judeo-Christian myths rather than theological touchstones. If you limit oneself to judging the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent agent, then Plantinga's argument is quite a bit stronger.
posted by boaz at 10:01 AM on November 5, 2005

The consensus, insofar as it exists at all, is still that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity's moral wishes must still override our moral choices.

So far as I am aware, this is incorrect. Even Plantinga's primary opponents on this point have largely conceeded that Plantinga's arguments are correct, though they usually retort that Plantinga's view is emotionally unsatisfying.

J.L. Mackie has said that "since this defence [that is, Plantinga's defense] is formally possible, and its principle involves no real abandoment of our ordinanry view of the opposition between good and evil, we can concede that the problem of evil does not, after all, show that teh central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another. But whether this offers a real [that is, emotionally satisfying] solution to the problem is another question." Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, pg. 154.

Similarly, William Abraham has ackowledged that "in terms of strict logic Plantinga is entirely correct". Abraham simply faults Plantinga for "hiding behind logical possibilities". Abraham, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, pg. 68.

In other words, Plantinga may not meet the existential, emotional needs of the atheologians, but he does defeat their logical arguments that Christian belief is irrational. As I said, in my understanding this is a reasonably settled consensus among professional philosophers.

Boaz, your other arguments are certainly common responses, but they are not generally considered to be sufficient to overcome Plantinga's defense in a strictly logical sense.
posted by gd779 at 10:26 AM on November 5, 2005

the consensus of academic philosophers

damn. just laughed coca cola through my nose.
posted by andrew cooke at 10:26 AM on November 5, 2005

As I said, in my understanding this is a reasonably settled consensus among professional philosophers.

Most contemporary philosophers don't even specialize in philosophy of religion, so I don't see how there can be a "consensus" among all philosophers about a particular theological argument. You generally won't get a consensus among philosophers on any philosophical thesis except for a few very fundamental things. It doesn't do much good to tally up the votes among philosophers, since they have no authority aside from the merits of their arguments.
posted by Jaltcoh at 10:53 AM on November 5, 2005

Well, that's a fair point, Jaltcoh, so far as it goes. I didn't really mean all philosophers, obviously. I meant to refer to all the professional philosophers who focus on this issue with certain roughly similar (say, traditionally Western, for the sake of clarity) epistemological perspectives.

It doesn't do much good to tally up the votes among philosophers, since they have no authority aside from the merits of their arguments.

Well, I'm not sure how you'd measure the merits of a particular argument, if not by either reading the argument directly (as I suggested) or else tallying up the votes of the people who get paid to think carefully about this stuff. (And that's setting aside the question of what the "merits" of an argument might actually mean).
posted by gd779 at 11:07 AM on November 5, 2005

I meant to refer to all the professional philosophers who focus on this issue with certain roughly similar (say, traditionally Western, for the sake of clarity) epistemological perspectives.

I know, but that introduces a huge bias. If you're just looking at philosophers who specialize in religion, those will disproportionately tend to be philosophers with a certain agenda, e.g. making arguments in favor of Christianity. Of course there are some philosophers who do philosophy of religion and criticize Christianity (Quentin Smith). But it's still skewed. So the "consensus" argument doesn't really work (and that's in addition to the fact that consensus is never a reason to accept a philosophical premise).

Well, I'm not sure how you'd measure the merits of a particular argument, if not by either reading the argument directly...or else tallying up the votes of the people who get paid to think carefully about this stuff.

You would do it by reading the argument and making up your own mind, not by tallying up votes of people who get paid to think about it.
posted by Jaltcoh at 11:42 AM on November 5, 2005

Plantinga is the best academic philosopher to read first on this; his God Freedom and Evil is very accessible. I won't ventriloquate as any consensus of philosophers, but speaking for myself, I'd say that Plantinga's criticisms of Mackie's argument are very strong (Mackie argued that the evils in the world furnish good reason to think that conventional theism is false, i.e. that a good and omnipotent god does not exist), but Plantinga's version of the Free Will Defense (that shows how theism and evil are compatible) will only convince someone who really wants to be a theist already.

The article in wikipedia in its current state doesn't present Plantinga's pretty much devastating criticism of Mackie.

Bottom line: reason has yet to choose convincingly either for theism or atheism.
posted by diodotos at 11:49 AM on November 5, 2005

I know, but that introduces a huge bias. If you're just looking at philosophers who specialize in religion, those will disproportionately tend to be philosophers with a certain agenda, e.g. making arguments in favor of Christianity. Of course there are some philosophers who do philosophy of religion and criticize Christianity (Quentin Smith). But it's still skewed.

*blink, blink*

...

You think that... most academic philosophers of religion... are anxious to justify, and biased in favor of, Christian belief?

I... I don't really know what to say to that.

Except this, I guess: you're obviously not working as an academic. If this subject is interesting to you, I humbly suggest that you read more professional, contemporary philosophy.
posted by gd779 at 11:50 AM on November 5, 2005

did anyone mention "free will"?

and look what it has done to our little beautiful blue planet ... my guess is god is very very sad.
posted by specialk420 at 11:51 AM on November 5, 2005

Plantinga's version of the Free Will Defense (that shows how theism and evil are compatible) will only convince someone who really wants to be a theist already.

This is true. Plantinga's aim is only to save theism from the charge of irrationality. He does not intend to provide affirmative proof of the existence of God, and his defense cannot be made to do that sort of work. All it does, is show that the problem of evil cannot be used to challenge preexisting belief in God.
posted by gd779 at 11:54 AM on November 5, 2005

You think that... most academic philosophers of religion... are anxious to justify, and biased in favor of, Christian belief?

Actually, no, that's not what I said.
posted by Jaltcoh at 11:58 AM on November 5, 2005

Very interesting that in this whole thread, and apparently in most of the linked articles, there’s hardly any acknowledgment of how colossally anthopocentric all this speculation and argument is: As if modern human reasoning and our present human experience must obviously be the alpha and omega of all creation; that human biological realities and imperatives encompass the full range of possible consciousness; that if “god” exists, then contemporary human logical methods must be able to comprehend not only the nature of “god” but also the limits under which “god” behaves; that the human nervous system can fully comprehend the nature of time, creation, and meaning; that the bandwidth of our senses (while clearly “somewhat” limited) must be able to detect “most” of creation, or least all of the “good” parts of all the possible dimensions; that either cosmic evolution or intelligent design has topped out with humanity; that the human sense of meaning, consequence, cause/effect, implication, sequential time, and “plot” must reflect the actual scope of the “big story” of all possible universes... Does this really seem likely to anyone in this day and age? I guess it does; sorry I can’t join in.

If we are all seeing through a glass darkly here on earth, doesn’t that MEAN that we are not able to understand creation and our place in it? Doesn’t that mean that we don’t know what creation/existence will look like when we ARE able to see clearly?

Regardless of whether it’s all going to work out for the “best,” or it’s only going to do so for the chosen/redeemed/whatever, just how is that any of us is here enabled to understand what the “best” actually is, or will appear to be, from whatever perspective we might have after it does “work out”?

I simply can't ignore how how the “significance” of any historical phenomenon tends to change with time and to vary from differing points of view. So how am I going to be able to see the significance of all of history, either my own or that of the whole of creation... My observations suggest that the range of possible “meanings” is as likely to be as infinite as the rest of creation. Personally, all I hope for is that my own POV will continue to change, maybe even expand...
posted by dpcoffin at 12:03 PM on November 5, 2005

I guess: you're obviously not working as an academic. If this subject is interesting to you, I humbly suggest that you read more professional, contemporary philosophy.

Again, so many of your arguments hinge on the idea that "This person has authority, so they're right," or "This person doesn't have authority, so they're wrong." You're right that I'm not a professional philosopher. But I know enough about philosophy to know that the only thing that matters in philosophy is the quality of the arguments, not the prestige or number of people who are making the arguments.

I hate to have sidetracked the discussion like this. Many commenters to this thread have eloquently defended essentially the same position you're advocating (variations on the free will argument). But they do it by actually convincing people, not by referring to some unnamed mass of experts who have been convinced.
posted by Jaltcoh at 12:05 PM on November 5, 2005

I simply can't ignore how how the “significance” of any historical phenomenon tends to change with time and to vary from differing points of view. So how am I going to be able to see the significance of all of history, either my own or that of the whole of creation... My observations suggest that the range of possible “meanings” is as likely to be as infinite as the rest of creation. Personally, all I hope for is that my own POV will continue to change, maybe even expand...

I can't help but think that certain atrocities, like the Rwandan genocide, will continue to be seen as senseless and horrific across different eras and perspectives.

I don't mean to belittle your overall point, because you're right that the perspective of a mere human being is limited. We need to be aware of that. But so many of the responses to this question seem to amount to: "Who are you to even wonder how so much evil can co-exist with a loving god?" We can certainly be disturbed by the problem of evil and try to confront it head-on while still being aware of the limited nature of human cognition and perspective.
posted by Jaltcoh at 12:13 PM on November 5, 2005

There is no god.
posted by jdroth at 12:46 PM on November 5, 2005

Jaltcoh said: “I can't help but think that certain atrocities, like the Rwandan genocide, will continue to be seen as senseless and horrific across different eras and perspectives.”

I‘d like to agree, so long as these are remembered amongst those who have even heard of them. But look at how the moral landscape of US history alone has changed in the last hundred years as our collective sense of Manifest Destiny has been recalibrated. Hardly a month goes by in which I don’t learn of some atrocity of human history or prehistory that I had never before been conscious of. There must be a nearly infinite number of large and small horrors that human eyes have witnessed and human senses suffered from.

I don’t mean that it’s senseless to have a POV or a reaction to history. And I’m not suggesting that humans should struggle to overcome or deny either their biology or their moral standards. I simply can’t accept that we can know, from “here,” what the “ultimate” meaning of anything is, or what “here” really looks like to any entities with beyond-human senses, let alone any entity capable of ultimate knowledge. Aren’t all of our even personal experiences of meaning works in progress, and haven’t they all undergone at least a few stunning reversals, quantum leaps, flights of fancy and descents into confusion? Mine certainly has.

This is quite apart from wondering why any assumption that a god exists, implies that he is “allowing” things. Or taking sides in human dramas and choosing to intervene in some of them...or ALL of them. Etc.
posted by dpcoffin at 12:52 PM on November 5, 2005

I think part of the problem is understanding how limited even Plantinga's defense of theism is meant to be: it only concerns moral evil, not natural evil and it specifically fails if Heaven is meant to exist or this deity is humanity's creator. It's 'emotionally unsatisfying' to philosophers because the belief it rationalizes bears no resemblence to any school of modern religious thought.

And even then, it's hardly the consensus belief gd779 paints it as. Even in the summary he first linked, they list 2 rebuttals to it.
posted by boaz at 1:00 PM on November 5, 2005

I think part of the problem is understanding how limited even Plantinga's defense of theism is meant to be: it only concerns moral evil, not natural evil

This is incorrect. Plantinga addresses natural evil as well. He does this by setting up a plausible scenario (which, to refute the charge of irrationality, need not be provably true, only possible) under which natural evil is attributed to significantly free but non-human persons (such as Satan). His argument is that it's possible that God could not have created a world with a greater balance of good over evil if he did not create such creatures. I won't go any further into his argument than that, because you really should read his works yourself if you're interested in the subject.

...and it specifically fails if Heaven is meant to exist or this deity is humanity's creator.

This is also incorrect. You really ought to read the relevant literature, including Plantinga's response to the arguments that you're discussing.

Even in the summary he first linked, they list 2 rebuttals to it.

Well, that's because I linked to a wikipedia article of disputed neutrality, rather than to an academic paper.
posted by gd779 at 1:06 PM on November 5, 2005

If you have an argument, gd779, you should make it instead of engaging in philosophical hand-waving. I can point to academic papers rebutting Plantinga, and pompously advise you to read up, but that's hardly a helpful philosophical approach.
posted by boaz at 1:34 PM on November 5, 2005

*sigh*

boaz, the problem of evil isn't one of my areas of interest. It just happens to be adjacent to an area that I'm interested in, and so I happen to know a little bit about the field. I thought that it would be helpful for the poster to know that there was a surprising amount of agreement around Plantinga's arguments. I never intended that to settle the issue, but I think it is a useful data point.

That is all I ever intended to say, but people kept misrepresenting the field as I understand it, and so I attempted to correct their misunderstanding of the facts. And if someone more knowledgable than me, maybe someone who works in the field directly, would like to correct my understanding, then fine. I will gladly stand corrected.

But, as usual, "winning" the argument appears to be more important to you folks than actually looking carefully for the truth, and "evidence" discovered after the fact (and probably without sufficient -- or any -- scrutiny) is being put forward to defend a preexisting belief. Fine. I don't really care what you believe about God or about the problem of evil. I've said the only thing I wanted to say.

But please don't misrepresent the state of the field by speaking authoritatively on subjects* with which you are, apparently, completely unfamiliar. That's all I'm asking.

* I speak here of the question regarding the academic consensus, not of the underlying subject of God and evil.
posted by gd779 at 2:05 PM on November 5, 2005

And by the way, boaz, here is the first paragraph of the second paper that you linked to in support of your belief that Plantinga's views don't have a consensus among academic philosophers:

It used to be widely held by philosophers that God and evil are incompatible. Not any longer. Alvin Plantinga's Free Will Defense is largely responsible for this shift. Indeed, Robert Adams avers that "it is fair to say that Plantinga has solved this problem. That is, he has argued convincingly for the consistency of [God and evil]." And William Alston writes that "Plantinga...has established the possibility that God could not actualize a world containing free creatures that always do the right thing." You might expect praise like this from Christian philosophers. You might not expect it from William Rowe, one of the foremost atheistic philosophers of our day, but this is precisely what we find. Rowe writes:

Some philosophers have contended that the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the existence of the theistic God. No one, I think, has succeeded in establishing such an extravagent claim. Indeed, granted incompatibilism, there is a fairly compelling argument for the view that the existence of evil is logically consistent with the existence of the theistic God. (For a lucid statement of this argument, see Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil.)

With testimonies like these, perhaps we will be considered foolhardy right from the start when we announce our aim in this essay. For we aim to show that Plantinga's celebrated Free Will Defense fails.

A few lone instances of challenge to an otherwise "celebrated" argument does not upset or even seriously disturb my understanding of the situation: that Plantinga is widely regarded by most professional philosophers of religion as having solved the problem of evil from a purely intellectual standpoint.
posted by gd779 at 2:10 PM on November 5, 2005

Yes, that was my point, that you were falling back on lazy appeals to authority instead of logical arguments. Since you seem to have intended that bit of intellectual laziness, I guess it's okay.

Even when I took Philosophy of Religion courses back in the early 90s, I remember Plantinga being considered a classic paper, but hardly a settled matter. Already, the Problem of Heaven and God's Free Will Objection had been raised and I am surprised to see them still unanswered a decade later. Pretty weak sauce you got there IMHO.
posted by boaz at 2:23 PM on November 5, 2005

It's not that God allows it, it's just that he hasn't forced Satan to stop it. Yet.
posted by whoda at 2:29 PM on November 5, 2005

I am surprised to see them still unanswered a decade later.

/bangs head against the wall

They're not unanswered! Please stop misrepresenting a field with which you are unfamiliar!

And by the way, that second paper that you linked to: You do realize that it argues that God and evil are compatible, right? The authors think that Plantinga went about things in the wrong way, but they agree with his conclusion. So if my "sauce" is so weak, why are you presenting papers in support of it? Did you even read the paper before posting it?

Please, boaz, stop hurting America. State your personal opinion, but please don't misrepresent the scholarship.
posted by gd779 at 2:31 PM on November 5, 2005

And that's my last word on this subject.
posted by gd779 at 2:35 PM on November 5, 2005

Yes I did. The question on which your mythical 'consensus' was based was that Plantinga 'settled' the problem of evil. The fact that there have been convincing problems with Plantinga's argument found by both supporters and detractors of the problem of evil is, well, actually the point.

It's funny how you accuse me both of a) looking purely for 'evidence' to support my position and b) posting something that disgrees with my position on the problem of evil. Please decide which I'm guilty of and try again.
posted by boaz at 2:40 PM on November 5, 2005

*cough* No philosophical argument about god or any property pertaining to god will ever be solved, or agreed upon, or stabilise with even a precarious 'consensus' either one way or the other.

Because it's philosophy, and because god hasn't thundered "You philosophers have it all wrong; here's what I think". If he did, philosophers would probably argue back at some inconsistency, and god would cry for a fraction of a second before ceasing to exist. And then the philosophers would have to stop writing papers about anything to do with him.
posted by paperpete at 4:30 PM on November 5, 2005

Either god is a mean bastard who does not need or care about your belief in him, or, he doesn't exist.

Either way, Atheism is the way to go! (Just stay away from Ayn Rand.)
posted by delmoi at 4:50 PM on November 5, 2005

And that's my last word on this subject.

Omniscient and benevolent!
posted by Hildago at 6:36 PM on November 5, 2005

"If God exists, and if God is good, then why allow all the atrocities that humans are committing against each other?"

Because our finite conception of "good" is flawed; we can't see what's good or not until we comprehend the whole.

As the Talmudic Rabbis used to put it, God hides. It is apparent that he does not cease to be mysterious, and that a true understanding of him is rarer than the rarest gems. Those who respond that there is no such God, and that believing in such a God is foolishness, should take note: when we say that God doesn't make sense, we mean that we can make absolutely no sense of what we see in the world. That's the point: God or no God, the world is almost impossible to fathom. God is just a word for the deepest understandings of that mystery that, as yet, have been attained by man.

Also, the meaning of life isn't death.
posted by Viomeda at 6:47 PM on November 5, 2005

www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com
posted by IndigoRain at 7:07 PM on November 5, 2005

www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com

But why does Marshal Brain hate logic?
posted by delmoi at 11:03 PM on November 5, 2005

Simple thing: If one assumes God to be omnipotent, one cannot have a God that CAN'T do things, or must prioritize things, or would like to do things but (again) can't...

Please, just be consistent.

/ Pet peeve
posted by LordSludge at 10:13 PM on November 6, 2005

Lots of stuff here. Apologies if someone has already mentioned this - I skimmed the responses but may have missed it:

The presence of evil in the world allows God's love to be revealed in forgiveness, or other "anti-evil" actions.

I'm paraphrasing what I was told as an impressionable child.
posted by ajp at 4:03 AM on November 7, 2005

So God allows the Holocaust so he can forgive the Nazis? Sorry, doesn't work for me.
posted by languagehat at 7:58 AM on November 7, 2005 [1 favorite]