God and smallpox

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Among the reader comments to a recent New York Times interview on cosmology vs. theism was this one, which struck me as more enlightened than anything in the interview itself:

When a theist can explain to me God's purpose in creating smallpox, and allowing it to ravage humanity until scientists finally understood its mechanism and completely eliminated it, they will have my attention. If it served a purpose for there to be smallpox, how could we eliminate it? And if it served no purpose, how could God have created it, or allowed it, unless He just enjoyed our suffering and death, until we finally outwitted him.

It's not a new argument—I doubt there are any new arguments for or against theism—but rather an interesting wrinkle on an old one, and particularly well stated. We can point out any number of horrid diseases caused by microorganisms that, under theism, had to be created by God (or allowed by God to evolve); what's interesting about smallpox is that this evil bit of God's creation has been totally wiped out by human beings. So, under theism, what was God's point in creating or allowing smallpox? And did we subvert His will by getting rid of it?

Bible-believing Christians are fond of saying that evil entered the world after the "Fall." Before Eve ate that damned apple, everything was peachy—no sickness, no death . . . no clothes. Then the talking snake did his thing and it all fell apart. But the language here is interesting: evil "entered the world." No agent is mentioned. It just happened, as if God was a helpless spectator to the advent of evil rather than the agent who brought it about. Of course this directly contradicts the famous passage in Isaiah where God states unequivocally that He Himself is the author of evil:

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. (KJV)

I suspect that if pressed, a theist will resort to the "mysterious" dodge here. Yes, God certainly does work in mysterious ways.

[TheVeganAtheist]

Ive heard this same topic brought up on the Dogma Debate podcast in which David Smalley often asks why god, if he exists, had to make it THAT bad. I think he has a point. For free will to be an option, we just have to HAVE options. We don't need every single possible option at our disposal. 'Bad' could have been a stubbed toe, rather than childhood leukaemia.

The other consideration is if god is all knowing, and exists outside space and time (whatever that means), he knew how humans would mess up everything... why did he continue with "creation"? If god is all powerful, why couldn't he have made a world in which we didnt have to stroke his ego, and make it so difficult to even confirm his existence?

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Ive heard this same topic brought up on the Dogma Debate podcast in which David Smalley often asks why god, if he exists, had to make it THAT bad. I think he has a point. For free will to be an option, we just have to HAVE options. We don't need every single possible option at our disposal. 'Bad' could have been a stubbed toe, rather than childhood leukaemia.

The other consideration is if god is all knowing, and exists outside space and time (whatever that means), he knew how humans would mess up everything... why did he continue with "creation"? If god is all powerful, why couldn't he have made a world in which we didnt have to stroke his ego, and make it so difficult to even confirm his existence?

Right. One of the most potent arguments against God creating the universe is the simple fact that the world, in so many respects, is so shitty! Is this really the best that an infinitely wise, infinitely powerful being could do? As Woody Allen famously said, God, if he exists, is basically an underachiever.

[brimstoneSalad]

This is a slightly harder (rhetoric-wise) version of the typical problem of evil question.
It's a good question to ask theists to get them to think for once, but it's not really an argument against the existence of a god.

It does usually serve as an argument against the religious claim that they "have all of the answers", because failure to answer it demonstrates that they only answer one question by creating more questions. They do the same with their claim to answer the "first cause" question.

BUT, unlike the first cause question (which they can not answer adequately), any theist will run to his or her pastor/guru/etc. and will probably receive a plausible answer for this one -- and you will find some apologists are up to the task of taking on this question.
Every major apologetic field basically has an answer to this established in canon; they're called theodicies.

So, these kinds of challenges never make much progress beyond the laity.

Any theodicy will tend to have holes in it eventually, but most people will neither know nor dig that deep into it.
When you find the holes, and they appeal to the mysterious nature of their god, admitting that they don't have all of the answers, that's about as far as you can go with this one.

That is, it's not an argument against the existence of their god- just one against the existence of their complete knowledge on the subject. And any intelligent theist will usually admit upfront that he or she can't know god completely.

To push this argument further than it really goes, and try to use it as an argument against the existence of a god, would be making the argument from personal incredulity fallacy.

Why can't this kind of argument be used to disprove god?

Ex falso quodlibet. Or, "from a falsehood, anything follows"

The three premises of the argument may seem to contradict each other, but the qualities ascribed to god in the individual premises are also internally contradictory.

You can't really accept the premise that "god is omnipotent", even provisionally, because the concept is incoherent and internally contradictory, and doing so means you throw out any logical coherence- and that makes any strong argument against the existence of such a god impossible.

Certainly, the problem of evil is a good thing to mention to get them thinking, but it's not very good at carrying the weight of a strong argument against the existence of a god.

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I’m aware there’s a vast literature on theodicy and the problem of evil. I admit I haven’t read much of it, and what I have read I’ve generally found off-putting. Apologists engage in obvious sophistry and try to tap-dance their way around what seems to me an insoluble problem. Not to my taste.

Is the "incoherent, internally contradictory" nature of the premise God is omnipotent due to paradoxes like: “Can God create a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?”—that kind of thing?

In any event, let me try to modify the argument in a way that avoids ascribing absolute omnipotence to God.


A layman’s naïve attempt at a Problem of Evil argument

To be proved:

P: If God exists, he is not the “God of Popular Theism” (GPT).

• 1. For children to suffer is not good.
  2. Tuberculosis causes children to suffer.
  3. An individual who has the power to prevent suffering but does not do so is not good, unless doing so would incur a still greater evil.
  4. If God is the GPT, then he is sufficiently potent to be able to destroy tuberculosis.
  5. God has not destroyed tuberculosis.
  6. If God can destroy tuberculosis without incurring a still greater evil but has not done so, he is not good.
  7. The GPT is good.
  8. Therefore P. QED
  9. If God cannot destroy tuberculosis without incurring a still greater evil, then his power is far weaker than what is ascribed to the God of Popular Theism.
  10. Therefore P. QED

Discussion:

Throughout the foregoing I’m assuming the validity of John Stuart Mill’s “I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures.“ I don’t see how you can argue with that. To say “God is good, but of course ‘good’ means something different when applied to God” debases language.

#1: To avoid the dodge that suffering can lead to greater good, or that suffering is deserved as a punishment for evil, I’ve used children here. No rational, moral person can look at a child suffering from a terrible disease and say, “This is good.” (I certainly cannot conceive of such a person. Is this an Argument from Personal Incredulity? I don’t think so, because any theory of morality worthy of consideration regards innocent suffering as not good.)

#2: Incontrovertible.

#3: See the Mill quote above.

#4: I’ve avoided “omnipotent” here in favor of “sufficiently potent.” Even if the GPT isn’t literally omnipotent, it’s clear that if he was powerful enough to create a universe with the Milky Way and the Andromeda Nebula and supernovae and black holes and dolphins and human beings, he’s certainly powerful enough to destroy all existing copies of the TB bacillus.

#5: Incontrovertible.

#6: See the Mill quote.

#7: By definition.

#9: If God doesn’t have the power to get rid of TB without incurring greater evil, does he really have the power that the GPT is supposed to have? No one who believes in the GPT would be willing to accept the idea that the reason God hasn’t destroyed TB is that he isn’t able to do so without bringing more evil into the world. Voltaire definitively disposed of Dr. Pangloss's "best of all possible worlds," didn't he?

So where did I go wrong?

[brimstoneSalad]

I’m aware there’s a vast literature on theodicy and the problem of evil. I admit I haven’t read much of it, and what I have read I’ve generally found off-putting. Apologists engage in obvious sophistry and try to tap-dance their way around what seems to me an insoluble problem. Not to my taste.

Look at it from the other side: They think scientists are doing the same by questioning the origins of life, or the universe.
By not understanding evolution, and not being interested in it, all they see is a bunch of made-up stuff that, to them, seems incredulous. The same way by not bothering to understand relativity, quantum physics, etc.

They are just making this stuff up as they go, in an ad hoc process to try to make something seem sensible.
But they think what they're really doing is learning about the nature of god.

Anyway, the only reason it's unsolvable is because the premises are incoherent.

Is the "incoherent, internally contradictory" nature of the premise God is omnipotent due to paradoxes like: “Can God create a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?”—that kind of thing?

Something like that.

Does omnipotence include the ability to do logically impossible things? If it does, it violates logic, and any being with that property can not exist.
Does omnipotence exclude logically impossible things?

As the Christian bible says: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26

If "all things" only means all possible things, that kind of statement is a useless tautology.

With a spoon, all possible things are also possible.

It decays into useless, meaninglessness.

The same for omniscience, omni-benevolence, and the rest.

In any event, let me try to modify the argument in a way that avoids ascribing absolute omnipotence to God.

It's no longer the same argument if you do that. Aside, the "GPT" implies that.

To play a bit of devil's advocate:

1. For children to suffer is not good.

One could argue a little suffering builds character. This is not inherently untrue (but it does only apply to a little bit).

They also claim that suffering provides a test of faith which allows god to reward people in the afterlife.
Or that all suffering is earned by sin, and nobody undeserving ever suffers (remember original sin? They're big fans).

2. Tuberculosis causes children to suffer.

One could argue that they don't have to suffer if they pray to god/Jesus for intercession. All they have to do is ask not to suffer, apparently- theists generally believe in faith healing (the bible contains a lot of that). It's empirically false, but they believe it's true, and won't accept atheist science saying otherwise.

There is also the theistic semi-solipsistic approach, which believes that people who are suffering have had their souls removed from their bodies, and they only appear to be here for our benefit. That is, that suffering is not real.

3. An individual who has the power to prevent suffering but does not do so is not good, unless doing so would incur a still greater evil.

That's not true. An individual who does not prevent suffering within his or her power is not perfectly good. They could still be more good than bad.
We let people suffer all of the time, when we have the power to stop it. You don't have to do everything within your power to be basically a good person- or good preternatural being for that matter.

A theist usually isn't smart enough to argue that, though, and also believes in the irrational notion of omni-benevolence: which precludes god merely being more good than bad, requiring perfect goodness (despite the bible being pretty explicit about this not being the case in a number of places).

A theist will instead argue that heaven and hell are infinite happiness and reward, so all of the pleasure and suffering of this life are nothing by comparison- they're less than a cosmic blink of the eye. Any finite number, divided by infinity, being zero.

When you deal with infinities, in any practical regard (since they're really just mathematical abstracts that don't exist in reality), normal, rational thought tends to go out the window. This is one of the things that makes the concept of an infinite god inherently wicked and irrational, barring everything else.

4. If God is the GPT, then he is sufficiently potent to be able to destroy tuberculosis.

The bible mentions a number of things that god can't do, and implies still others. Nothing says explicitly that it can destroy TB.

If this god is omnipotent, it can do logically impossible things, so any argument against it following this premise based on logic is inherently useless anyway, and the presence of the quality itself disproves the existence of such a being.
This is really where the argument against the GPT notion of omnipotence should probably start and stop.

So, this god in question must not be omnipotent. In that case, who's to say what it can or can't do?
A strict reading of the old testament certainly implies some serious physical limits.

Consider also the theory of demonic evil- that there are other very very powerful forces aside from god also at work in the world. This is widely represented in the bible.

5. God has not destroyed tuberculosis.

Theists would say that god has, and does regularly destroy TB in acts of faith healing.
Or that by his will, we developed antibiotics, and he gave us the tools to destroy it ourselves (because interfering otherwise would be against the rules).

Or that TB doesn't exist as science understand it, or isn't harmful, but that demonic possession is what's actually the source of the apparent malady.

6. If God can destroy tuberculosis without incurring a still greater evil but has not done so, he is not good.

Incurring a greater evil is not the only limit on his powers (and that wouldn't preclude god from being merely good).

They say he has to hide himself or it would violate our free wills and negate salvation.
They say evil is necessary for a greater good.
Even that disease is a tool used to bring people to heaven.
Or that evil is caused by other powerful forces- either ones god can not destroy (which might just recreate TB), or should not destroy for some important reason.
There are so many apparently plausible reasons for god to do apparently shitty things, or not do certain apparently good things, that I can't list them all.

7. The GPT is good.

If only good, then it's not an issue. The issue comes with omni-benevolence.

9. If God cannot destroy tuberculosis without incurring a still greater evil, then his power is far weaker than what is ascribed to the God of Popular Theism.

Or any number of other apparently plausible reasons which limit his ability.

If the god is not omnipotent, this is a non-issue. If the god is omnipotent, then the very assertion of omnipotence disproves the god outright, and there's no need to go into the problem of evil at all.

I don’t see how you can argue with that. To say “God is good, but of course ‘good’ means something different when applied to God” debases language.

Correct. A double standard doesn't solve the issue.

This was addressed in the dialogue with Euthyphro with regards to piety.

#1: To avoid the dodge that suffering can lead to greater good, or that suffering is deserved as a punishment for evil, I’ve used children here.

Suffering can lead to greater goods, even empirically demonstrable ones within a single lifetime.

As a punishment: Children could be reincarnated, though that's not a popular excuse. More commonly, theists will appeal to original sin, which makes it impossible for god to protect us from evils without being purified first. See the faith healing arguments for the 'cure'.

No rational, moral person can look at a child suffering from a terrible disease and say, “This is good.”

Theists are not generally rational. If they were, they wouldn't be theists. Theists are also not generally moral people (to be fair, most people are not generally moral people- but instead base their actions on convenience, personal whim, and social prudence).

#2: Incontrovertible.

You'd be surprised what people can controvert when they're really trying hard and not limited by reality.

#3: See the Mill quote above.

This one you're actually wrong on (without even having to play devil's advocate). That only applies to omni-benevolence, which like omniscience, it an incoherent concept.

A godlike being can be good, and still do some shitty things, or fail to do some good things that are supposedly within its power.

#4: I’ve avoided “omnipotent” here in favor of “sufficiently potent.” Even if the GPT isn’t literally omnipotent, it’s clear that if he was powerful enough to create a universe with the Milky Way and the Andromeda Nebula and supernovae and black holes and dolphins and human beings, he’s certainly powerful enough to destroy all existing copies of the TB bacillus.

That doesn't follow.

A computer programmer can make programs, but we're limited in our ability to eliminate all of the bugs in our programs (particularly large and complicated ones).
In the case of 'god' as the programmer of the "matrix", he may be able to create planets, but be unable to eliminate diseases which arise naturally from the rules that govern the simulation.

#5: Incontrovertible.

If you're talking about complete destruction, maybe- but again, the issue is potency and ability, and those don't imply this can be done.

It also assumes things about TB that religious people don't necessarily accept. People can deny all sorts of things when they're not limited by reality.

#6: See the Mill quote.

False dichotomy, sorry.

#7: By definition.

Merely good, without being omni-benevolent, avoids the entire problem.

Omni-benevolence creates its own set of problems, because like omniscience, it's incoherent.

#9: If God doesn’t have the power to get rid of TB without incurring greater evil, does he really have the power that the GPT is supposed to have? No one who believes in the GPT would be willing to accept the idea that the reason God hasn’t destroyed TB is that he isn’t able to do so without bringing more evil into the world.

Most seem to believe precisely that. Their beliefs aren't usually coherent or particularly reasoned out.

Voltaire definitively disposed of Dr. Pangloss's "best of all possible worlds," didn't he?

The "best of all possible worlds" problem is more complicated than it might seem, because you have to get into what is really possible, and not just what seems to us to be possible, or what we can visualize (which isn't always possible). It's actually a stronger argument than you might think.

The problem for theists is that omnipotence is incoherent- it either violates logic, or is basically meaningless.

So, you should never even have to try to argue against the "best of all possible worlds" assertion, which is basically unfalsifiable, because you can defeat them on omnipotence before you ever get into it.

So where did I go wrong?

You didn't say "omnipotent", but you're still addressing the implications of concept- which implicitly accepts that omnipotence is possible. If you're granting theists that to start, you've already lost; they can come up with a bunch of empirically false or unfalsifiable bullshit to excuse the rest of it if you give them that, and they'll do it much faster (and in larger numbers) than you can argue against it.

The only way to win that kind of game is to not play.

Demonstrate how the game is fixed from the beginning, and why the premises are incoherent.