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Evil a guide for the perplexed [Second edition.]
 9781501324291, 1501324292

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Table of contents :
Preface to the Second EditionPreface to the First Edition1. What is Evil?2. Problems of Evil3. Free Will and Soul Making Theodicies4. A Global Theodicy of Fulfillment5. Anti-Theodicy, Misotheism, and Theodicy of Protest6. The Problem of Divine Hiddenness 7. Evil, Atheism, and the Problem of Good8. Evil and Suffering in Hinduism and Buddhism9. Eternal Goods and the Triumph over EvilNotesReferencesIndex

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Evil: A Guide for the Perplexed

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Evil: A Guide for the Perplexed Second Edition

Chad V. Meister

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

N E W YO R K • LO N D O N • OX F O R D • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square New York London NY 10018 WC1B 3DP USA UK www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2018 © Chad V. Meister, 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Meister, Chad V., 1965- author. Title: Evil: a guide for the perplexed / Chad Meister. Description: Second edition. | New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017042718 (print) | LCCN 2017047753 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501324307 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781501324291 (ePUB) | ISBN 9781501324277 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501324284 (hardback: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Theodicy. | Good and evil. | Good and evil–Religious aspects–Christianity. | Good and evil--Religious aspects--Hinduism. | Good and ­evil--Religious aspects--Buddhism. Classification: LCC BT160 (ebook) | LCC BT160 .M465 2018 (print) | DDC 170–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042718 ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-2428-4  PB: 978-1-5013-2427-7 ePub: 978-1-5013-2429-1  ePDF: 978-1-5013-2430-7 Cover design: Catherine Wood Cover image © Bridgeman Images Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound in the United States of America To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events, and the option to sign up for our newsletters.

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Preface to the Second Edition

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ince I wrote the first edition of this book, I have been engaged in much evil thinking. Or perhaps better stated, I have been engaged

in much thinking about evil. I have written a number of articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries, presented multiple conference papers, been the coeditor of three individual volumes—God and Evil; God and the Problem of Evil; and The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil—and been the general coeditor of a six-volume work entitled The History of Evil, each one of them, as their titles indicate, on the subject of evil. All in all, that amounts to well over a million words on evil. That is a lot of evil. I have learned a few things along the way from the many great thinkers I have studied, including those who have written in my edited works and those who have been written about in them. In this edition I have rewritten much of the material that was in the first, based on what I’ve learned from these works as well as further studies, research, contemplation, and comments and critiques on the earlier edition. I have included two new chapters as well. One of those chapters is about a theodicy of fulfillment—an attempt to sketch a (limited and global) theodicy for our day, here in the early decades of the twenty-first century, especially given an awareness of the global religious traditions and the many advances in science. The other new

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chapter is about anti-theodicy and theodicy of protest. These are fairly recent ways of thinking about the problem of evil that have arisen from those within the theistic camp who are not happy with the very project of theodicy. Thinking about evil and problems raised by evil have consumed my life for well over a decade now, and I have discussed the topic with countless scholars and others—both those with whom I am in agreement about various matters and those with whom I disagree, sometimes very strongly. There is much to learn from both sides. There are so many people to thank for their insights, comments, and questions on this difficult subject. In fact, there are simply too many to mention. I am especially grateful for my “evil” cohorts and coeditors, Paul Moser and Charles Taliaferro. They are brilliant scholars, insightful editors, and a real joy to work with. I also want to thank Billy Abraham and Paul Draper for an engaging and enjoyable journey together through Eleonore Stump’s magnum opus, Wandering in Darkness, on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. Those were some very memorable “evil” discussions I’ve had in recent years. I am grateful, too, for those people mentioned in the original Preface, as well as those included in footnotes and Further Reading sections, participants at conferences and talks in the United States and the United Kingdom, and the many graduate and undergraduate students I have had over the years. I have no axes to grind nor grand illusions of giving satisfactory answers to all (or any) of the problems and challenges raised by the reality of evil. There is only so much that can be said in a book like this, and there is only so much that I have to offer in any case. In saying what I do, I have worked hard to avoid technical jargon and to make the prose interesting and accessible. To reveal my cards, religiously I am a Christian. While I am a student of religion and have studied other religious traditions

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extensively for many years, my expertise lies in the Christian tradition. But I am also a trained philosopher and a bit of a skeptic. I am generally leery of those who claim with absolute certainty some particular claim or view and yet are unaware of critiques of it and counterarguments to it. It is important to study all sides of an issue. I have attempted to treat all sides objectively and fairly, examining arguments and counterarguments, though I believe that such a task is not fully achievable. In striving for fairness and objectivity, I have included additional resources at the end of each chapter in the Further Reading sections. There you will find books and articles on various sides of the issues, where I have included some of the best of the best from different religious and nonreligious perspectives. I encourage you to explore some of this material, including (perhaps especially) that with which you disagree. Doing so helps to keep us humble and honest. My hope is that this book will provide a helpful guide for pilgrims like me who believe that evil is an important subject to ponder, not only at an abstract or intellectual level, but also at a practical one. As the late philosopher Louis Pojman once noted, “Theory without practical application is sterile, and practice without theory is blind.”1 Let’s think hard about evil in all its many and varied forms, but let us also strive to do something about it.

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here are few topics in the history of Western thought about which more has been published than evil. Works on evil go

back as far in intellectual history as publications go. In plays, novels, movies, even art—wherever there is human life and inspiration—we find reflections on and depictions of evil. Evil is ubiquitous. This book emerged out of much reflection on the origin and nature of evil. I have struggled with this subject on an intellectual level for years. Though I have thought much about evil (probably too much) and done a fair amount of work on the topic, I wonder if a better subtitle for this book might be A Guide by the Perplexed! Evil is a subject that no one can fully master, which is probably a good thing. It is simply too large and complex (and dark) a matter. There is much about evil that cannot be covered in a single volume like this one, but I do hope that the musings offered here will be a helpful guide through the various issues that arise given the evil that exists in our world. This is a philosophical work on evil, not a historical or psychological or sociological one (though all these areas are significant). If you finish it thinking even a little more clearly about evil, or better yet, come away ready to tackle evil—both intellectually and practically—I will consider this project a good success. I have learned much from colleagues and friends who have worked on this subject, reading their articles and books, discussing and

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debating the issues at conferences and in private conversation, and brainstorming about future projects related to it. I would especially like to thank Charles Taliaferro, my dialectical comrade in evil. His brilliance on this and many other matters is challenging and inspiring. James Stump has been an invaluable friend and sparring partner on the subject as well, engaging with me in countless “evil” conversations. I am most appreciative of his astuteness and sagacity. I am indebted to my wife Tammi for the insights she offered throughout the project and, more importantly, for demonstrating how much value there is in the world, despite its evil. Much appreciation goes to Haaris Naqvi, senior editor at Continuum Publishing, for his encouragement, guidance, and seeing this project through to the end. I am also grateful to the following people for their wisdom and helpful reflections on the subject: Marilyn McCord Adams, Paul Draper, William Hasker, John Hick, Paul Moser, Michael Murray, Michael Peterson, Michael Rea, William Rowe, Eleonore Stump, Richard Swinburne, Jerry Walls, and Keith Ward. May their tribes increase. I dedicate this book to my sons, Justin and Joshua. They are goods in my life beyond description and limit and have taught me much about value, love, and the significance of will and choice in a world where evil is an ever-present reality. My wish is that through the challenges they face they will continue to grow and mature into persons of deep character, extraordinary wisdom, and striking moral acuity.

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1 What Is Evil? Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart. . . —ALEKSANDR I. SOLZHENITSYN, THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO 1918–1956, 2, 615

What is wrong with the world? As I write these pages a Syrian refugee crisis looms with millions uprooted; war and political instability in Afghanistan pose a serious threat to international peace and security; sex trafficking is a sick, global phenomenon; millions are starving to death due to drought and famine in the horn of Africa; and chronic poverty continues to plague the planet. While these are all current events, humanity has been fraught with similar kinds of evils from time immemorial. Yet in some ways the crises seem to be more intense. They are certainly more potentially destructive than in time past, for nuclear weapons could actually destroy the entire planet. The world is heating up in other ways, too. Literally, the earth is getting warmer. And it is extremely likely, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and virtually all climate scientists, that the cause of global warming has had much to do with human activity (greenhouse gases) since the mid-twentieth century.1 The effects of this temperature increase on our planet are potentially catastrophic. In fact, global climate change has already

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had observable effects, including shrinking glaciers, accelerated sea level rise, and increasingly intense heat waves. Climatologists maintain that if this trend continues, there will be declining water supplies, reducing agricultural yields, increasing wildfires, growing insect outbreaks and tree diseases that will cause widespread tree dieoff, the Arctic will likely become ice-free, sea levels will rise one to four feet by the end of the century (putting many cities at great risk), hurricanes will become more intense, and much more. The fact is, if major international efforts are not put in place to change the current global climate trajectory, our planet will soon be in peril.2 There is no denying that our world is plagued with problems. Pain, suffering, destruction, and death are no less real, no less menacing, and no less ubiquitous today than they have ever been. We are faced with what we can call “evil” in its various pernicious forms each and every day as we watch the news, read the newspaper, or simply live out our lives. Evil is indeed always before use. But why? Why is there evil in the world? Why is there suffering and destruction, and why is there so much of it? Furthermore, how should we think about it? And how should we respond to it? What are our responsibilities given such overwhelming calamitous phenomena? Before exploring the whys and hows of evil, we need to first get clearer on what we are talking about when we use the term. So what is evil? What is its nature? Evil is not easy to define. We use the word in such divergent ways that one wonders if there truly is a definition that captures each and every example of its usage. We might say, for example, that Charles Manson was an evil man, that the earthquake in Haiti was an evil event, and that hell is an evil place. But what is the common meaning of “evil” in each of these examples? Dictionaries offer little help by telling us, for example, that evil is “the opposite of good” or “that which is morally reprehensible.” But here, as in many other instances of definition, the meanings of the

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term are multifarious and often fall short of capturing the depth and complexities of the term they are attempting to define. (A similar problem exists with the word “love,” for we might love our God, love our significant other, love taking naps, love making love, love our job, and love spaghetti. What common meaning of love can we find in these examples?) However, just as we find it difficult to offer a universal definition of some terms, we can still know what we are talking about when we use them in various contexts. Evil is like that. As it is used in the technical literature on the subject, the concept of evil comprises a wide expanse, covering everything harmful and destructive in the world. As mentioned above it is difficult, if not downright impossible, to provide a clear and concise definition. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians often construe evil in terms of sin or transgression against God. In many Native American traditions, evil is what reduces our happiness. For Daoists, evil does not exist in itself but is a disharmony in nature or disruption in the balance of things, which causes suffering. For Confucians, evil and suffering are real and inevitable aspects of the natural world, and we can learn and grow from them. The various Hindu and Buddhist traditions include the law of karma (cause and effect), when discussing evil, and this raises questions about evil that are in some ways different from those raised by traditions that do not include karma (more on this in Chapter 8). The meanings and uses of “evil” are vast indeed. Rather than attempt a definition of evil, for our purposes it will be more fruitful to avoid such an endeavor and instead to move forward with a general sense of the term. The philosopher David Hume provided a useful list of examples that can assist us: “Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills [that is, its evils], a hospital full of disease, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny,

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famine, or pestilence.”3 The list of evils includes such broad notions as pain (understood as a physical state where we wish our circumstances were otherwise), suffering (understood as a mental state where we wish our circumstances were otherwise), and injustice (understood as unfairness, the violation of the rights of others, and uncorrected abuse, neglect, or malfeasance). Beyond lists and broad notions, there are also classifications of evil.

Classifying Evil A standard classification of evil divides it into two broad types: moral and natural. Some examples may help to distinguish them. One of the worst nightmares a parent could experience occurred in Orange County, California, on June 10, 1991. An eleven-year-old girl, Jaycee Dugard, was on her way to school when she was abducted at the bus stop. Her stepfather was in eyesight of the event, spotting someone grabbing the girl and shoving her into a pickup truck. The stepfather grabbed his bike and began a frantic chase after them, but to no avail. His stepdaughter was gone in a flash. Sadly, both the little girl’s stepfather and her biological father were suspects in the case early on—as if the tragic event itself wasn’t bad enough. Eighteen years later, on August 4, 2009, the dreadful facts finally emerged. Jaycee had been abducted by Phillip Garrido, a rapist and chronic drug abuser, along with his wife, Nancy Garrido, and she had been held captive for eighteen years in a concealed area behind their house. During those years Jaycee experienced rape and psychological abuse by Phillip, and she birthed two children by him. Jaycee was finally rescued, almost two decades after her abduction. Evils of this kind are dubbed moral evils because they are in some sense the result of a person who is morally blameworthy for them.

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There was intention behind the event, and a person’s free will was involved. Some moral evils are great, as is this horror of child abuse. Other examples include genocide, torture, and other terrors inflicted on humans by humans. There are also less severe types of moral evils such as stealing or speaking negatively about someone. In addition, certain defects in one’s character are also often classified as moral evil, including greed, gluttony, vanity, and dishonesty. Another category of evil has to do not with moral agents, but with naturally occurring events or disasters that bring about pain or suffering. Examples of natural evils include floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, famine, illness such as leukemia and Alzheimer’s disease, disabilities such as deafness and blindness, and other terrible events that do harm to humans and other living creatures but for which no personal agent is responsible. Consider the earthquake that happened in Haiti on January 12, 2010. The epicenter of the quake occurred approximately sixteen miles west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. The magnitude was a catastrophic 7.0 on the Richter scale and included dozens of powerful aftershocks. It affected roughly three million people, destroying homes, commercial buildings, prisons, and sewer systems and killing close to three hundred thousand people and leaving over a million homeless. In standard English we commonly use the word “evil” to denote some horrific moral evil of one sort or another. We don’t often use it to refer to something that was “merely” bad, such as telling a “white lie,” or to some naturally occurring event, such as a tornado. But for our purposes in this book it will be used to include all the sorts of “evil” described above. Two other classifications of evil will also be distinguished in later chapters: gratuitous evil and horrendous evil. We shall leave them for later analysis. How one conceives of evil and the kinds of theoretical problems that arise from the reality of evil are to a great extent related to one’s worldview.

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A worldview, as used here, is the broad conceptual lens through which one views the world; it is a totalizing approach to life. It includes a set of assumptions or presuppositions that one holds about the fundamental constitution of reality and that provides the foundation on which we approach life.4 Theoretical problems raised by evil are especially acute for theism, traditionally understood as the view that an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God exists who created the world. We begin, then, by examining evil within the purview of theism.

Theism and Evil Why it is the case that if the God of theism exists, evil should not exist, may or may not be immediately obvious. In order to understand the problem raised by evil, it is important to elucidate what is meant by “God” within the traditional usage of the term. For the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—God is generally understood to be a nonphysical reality who is personal, or at least not less than personal (one who possesses both mind and will), ultimate reality (the source and ground of all things), separate from the world yet actively involved in the world (creator and sustainer), and worthy of worship (wholly good, having inherent moral perfection, and excelling in power). The Jewish prophets exalted God throughout their writings: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever” (Ps. 107:1). Writers of the Christian New Testament also proclaimed the goodness of God as creator of every good thing: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (Jas 1:17). The Islamic Qur’an offers similar depictions of God (Allah): “He is the One God; the Creator, the Initiator, the Designer. To Him belong the most beautiful names.

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Glorifying Him is everything in the heavens and the earth. He is the Almighty, Most Wise” (Surah 59:24). And in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, God is described with auspicious qualities such as supreme, infinite, all-encompassing, all-pervasive (6.30–31, 9.4), omnipotent (13.29–31), and the beginningless and endless (11.19, 11.47). The traditional theistic concept of God includes a cluster of properties attributed to God, including the following, which are especially relevant to the problem of evil: Creator and sustainer of the world. God brought the universe— time, space, matter, and energy—into existence, and God also sustains the world in existence through time. No created thing can exist at any point in time unless it is held in existence by God. All energies, or causal powers, come from God as well, so nothing can act without being supplied each moment by the energies or power of God. Omnipotent. Another property traditionally attributed to God is omnipotence, which is the property of being perfect in power. What does it mean to be perfect in power? Philosophers and theologians have struggled with this question, including the great Christian philosophical theologian Thomas Aquinas: “[Even though] all confess that God is omnipotent . . . it seems difficult to explain in what His omnipotence precisely consists.”5 One common meaning of omnipotence is being all powerful; an omnipotent being is capable of doing anything. Omniscient. The meaning of omniscience has also been widely debated, but one prominent historical view is that an omniscient being is completely perfect in knowledge. God knows everything that is a proper object of knowledge, and since only true propositions are proper objects of knowledge (only true propositions can be known), God knows all true propositions. Thus, God’s knowledge includes all events—past, present, and future. Omnibenevolent. This is the property of being perfect in benevolence or goodness. The word is also understood to mean

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being perfectly just, all-loving, wholly merciful, and other similar qualities. For the Abrahamic faiths, and for some forms of Hinduism as well, this is an essential attribute of God. Some theologians and philosophers have even argued that it is the central attribute of God. Each one of the above properties, and perhaps most especially this one, is problematic, given the existence of evil. This difficulty with evil is commonly referred to as the problem of evil. This problem has taken many forms, so it may be better to refer to problems of evil, as there are various difficulties we are confronted with, given the reality of evil. In the next chapter we will tackle some of these problems, but a central one can be put this way: If the God of traditional theism exists, then no evil should exist. But evil does exist. So the God of traditional theism does not exist. The problem is that there appears to be an inconsistency between God’s nature and the existence of evil. As the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BCE) put it: God . . . either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? or why does He not remove them?6 In the next chapter we will investigate some ways of trying to make sense of traditional theism, given the reality of evil. But other nontraditional approaches have also been made.

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Nontraditional Accounts of God and Evil There are a number of ways to attempt to explain the problems raised by evil outside the paradigm of traditional theism. Let’s home in on four of them. 1 God does not exist. One way to deal with problems raised by evil and theism is to simply reject theism altogether. If there is no God, we do not have an issue about why God would allow evil to exist. Problem solved. Or is it? We will explore atheism and evil in Chapter 7. Other forms of nontheism include Buddhism and some central Hindu traditions, and we will tackle them in Chapter 8. As we will see, there are still problems of evil that nontheistic approaches need to address, but the real rub seems to be the apparent inconsistency of the existence of evil and an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent creator God. 2 God exists but is not omnipotent. As we saw above, two of the properties traditionally attributed to God are omnipotence and omniscience. And as noted, a common understanding of divine omnipotence is that God can do anything whatsoever. God can create a world; God can answer prayer; God can do miracles; God can do whatever God wants. But this creates an obvious problem. If God can do anything, then God can abolish evil. But evil is not abolished; it continues on as it always has. Why? Traditional theists have this problem to deal with. But perhaps God is not omnipotent after all. In that case, maybe while God wants to eliminate evil, God cannot do so. So is God omnipotent? Can God really do anything whatsoever? Can God create square circles and married bachelors? Can God

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both exist and not exist simultaneously? What about sinning—can God sin? A few philosophers have thought that absolutely nothing can limit God’s power. Rene Descartes (1596–1650), for example, maintained that God is not limited by anything, including the laws of logic or mathematics. For Descartes, God could make it true that some object P both exists and does not exist at the same time, or that two plus two equals five, or that A is identical to the opposite of A. Most philosophers have not agreed with Descartes on this point, even those who affirm that God is omnipotent. Most have qualified the claim “God can do anything whatsoever” with a nuanced one such as “God can do anything that is logically possible” or “God possesses every power which is logically possible to possess.”7 Logical possibility means that it does not violate the basic laws of logic, such as the law of noncontradiction (which is that a claim and its opposite cannot both be true). Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne expounds on this point: A logically impossible action is not an action. It is what is described by a form of words which purport to describe an action, but do not describe anything which it is coherent to suppose could be done. It is no objection to A’s omnipotence that he cannot make a square circle. This is because “making a square circle” does not describe anything which it is coherent to suppose could be done.8 We will see in the next chapter that one of the strongest replies to evil given the reality of theism is in agreement with Swinburne’s assessment of omnipotence. While defenders of Descartes’s view might be unconvinced by rational argumentation against the claim that God is not limited by logic, they certainly could not argue the point on rational or logical grounds. To do so would be selfcontradictory and incoherent. Furthermore, if God could do the illogical, troubling moral consequences would follow. For example,

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God could break his9 promises, or lie, or do anything evil and still be good. Most theists are reticent to affirm that God can perform such immoral, illogical actions. This view of omnipotence, that God cannot perform certain actions (neither immoral ones nor logically impossible ones), is consistent with the traditional view of omnipotence as meaning perfect power rather than absolute power. On this view, mere power itself is not praiseworthy; only perfect or excellent power is. Since perfect power does not entail breaking promises, or lying, or violating contradictions, God could still be omnipotent and yet be unable to perform them. But the point of the nontraditional account of theism emphasized here is that God is not omnipotent in a more significant way. One of the most outspoken defenders of this position is Harold Kushner. In his book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, Kushner puts further limits on God. God cannot violate the laws of nature, violate free will, nor violate events that occur by chance. Since evil comes about because of them, God is limited in his ability to deal with evil. While God would like to abolish evil, he simply cannot, at least not at the current time. Perhaps God will be able to do so in the future.10 3 God exists but is not omniscient (in the traditional sense). Just as there are those who challenge the traditional notion of God’s omnipotence, there are also those who contest divine omniscience as traditionally understood. In recent times, one set of challenges has arisen from an analysis of the concepts of divine foreknowledge and human free will. If we have free will in a certain sense (libertarian free will, which will be explained later), then the future is open—it is undetermined. There are thus future events that are neither guaranteed to occur nor precluded from occurring by anything that has

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already happened. These are called future contingent events. For example, consider the possibility of a sea battle occurring next week. It might happen; it might not happen. Nothing now or in the past is determining that it will or will not occur. It seems, then, that there is indeterminacy in the world. The occurrence of the sea battle is a future contingent event. Some philosophers who maintain that there are future contingent events argue that such events cannot be known, even by an “omniscient” being. So, when God created the world, he did not know exactly how it would unfold. God cannot be held morally culpable for how this world turned out, then, since much of it involved the choices of free persons, undetermined and unknown by God. God did not foreknow the evil that would arise from free individuals, and God did not cause the evil that exists in the world, so God is not responsible for it. Process thinkers and open theists are two groups of philosophers and theologians who hold such a view.11 4 God exists but is not all good. The vast majority of theists historically have affirmed the perfection of God. Saint Anselm (1033–1109), a Christian theologian of the medieval period, famously described God this way: But what art thou, except that which, as the highest of all beings, alone exists through itself, and creates all other things from nothing? For, whatever is not this is less than a thing which can be conceived of. But this cannot be conceived of thee. What good, therefore, does the supreme Good lack, through which every good is? Therefore, thou art just, truthful, blessed, and whatever it is better to be than not to be.12 God is perfect with respect to every attribute, according to Anselm.

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Some theists have disagreed. For them, God exists but is not perfectly good. There have not been many theists who affirm this view, but there have been some (as we will see in Chapter 5, they are called misotheists). One Nobel Prize winner who affirmed it is Elie Wiesel. After suffering in a Nazi concentration camp, he came to the conclusion that God is malicious for allowing events as horrific as the Holocaust. His book Night is based on his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. In it he writes of his own disgust with God and humanity. His experiences were burned into his memory as the horrors that they were. Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.13 For Wiesel, everything came to an end during these horrors in the camps: humanity, history, literature, religion, and God. If God is not ultimately good, as Wiesel supposed, then of course the “problem of evil,” in an important sense, vanishes. 5 Evil is not real. One final approach to the problem of evil is to deny the reality of evil. As we will see in Chapter 8, certain

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religious traditions hold the view that evil is unreal, an illusion, and that seen from the right perspective will actually disappear from one’s thoughts and understanding. In Chapter 7 we will discover that some atheist thinkers also hold that evil is illusory. If evil is not real, there is no problem of evil—or so it may seem. Before concluding this chapter, something needs to be said about another dimension of evil that is just as important as the theoretical problems on which most of this book will be focused. I am referring to what is sometimes called the “existential problem of evil,” and while neither an intellectual issue nor a practical one, it is a real problem nonetheless.

The Existential Problem of Evil The existential problem of evil, which has various names in the literature including the “religious problem,” “moral problem,” “pastoral problem,” “psychological problem,” or “emotional problem,” is not easy to define or delineate. Perhaps it can be simply put as that existential feel with respect to evil which leads to disbelief in or hatred toward God. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga describes this sort of problem: The theist may find [an existential] problem in evil; in the presence of his own suffering or that of someone near to him he may find it difficult to maintain what he takes to be the proper attitude towards God. Faced with great personal suffering or misfortune, he may be tempted to rebel against God, to shake his fist in God’s face, or even to give up belief in God altogether.14 An example may clarify the connotation and power of the problem. A number of years ago I was standing in line with a group of friends at a restaurant. We were engaged in a theological discussion about the

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nature of God and evil (I acknowledge that I have atypical friends, and we have atypical dinner conversations) when a person in front of us asked if we were talking about God. I answered that yes, we were indeed. She then shared with us that she gave up belief in God two years ago. While her father was suffering and dying of cancer, she decided that she could no longer maintain her faith in God. And if he does exist, she said, she hates him. As she told us her story, her feelings of deep sorrow and anger bubbled to the surface. I could almost feel her pain and anguish as tears began to stream down her face in agony over her lost father. Having lost my own father-in-law after two years of his suffering, I know something of this experience. This is a clear case of the existential problem of evil. It’s not that this individual was offering reasoned arguments (although she may well have had them) for her feelings and thoughts about the reality of God, given pain and suffering . Rather, she was expressing her felt pain and perhaps even bitterness toward the notion of a God who would allow her father to suffer as he had. In such cases it usually does not matter much at the time whether there are theoretical responses to the problems of evil. For persons going through such experiences there is a willful, perhaps even obdurate, and sometimes maybe even warranted, rejection of God because of experienced evils. In situations such as this, one’s affections are at the fore rather than one’s intellections, and this state calls for something other than rational engagement. One theologian expresses it this way: Think of a young child who goes out to play on a playground. Sometime during her play, she falls and skins her knee. She runs to her mother for comfort. Now, her mother can do any number of things. She can tell her daughter that this has happened because she was running too fast and not watching where she was going. She must be more careful next time. The mother, if she knew them,

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might even explain the laws of physics and causation that were operating to make her child’s scrape just the size and shape it is. The mother might even expound for a few moments on the lessons God is trying to teach her child from this experience. If she then pauses and asks her daughter, “Do you understand, Sweetheart?” don’t be surprised if the little girl replies, “Yes, Mommy, but it still hurts!” All the explanation at that moment doesn’t stop her pain. The child doesn’t need a discourse; she needs her mother’s hugs and kisses. There will be a time for the discourse later; now she needs comfort.15 With respect to the existential problem of evil, it is important to note that the “problem” here is not really an argument per se, and thus is not demanding a logical, rational response. When an individual is personally confronted with significant evil and suffering and experiencing its effects, one does not necessarily need a logical or theoretical response to evil at that moment, but rather care, sympathy, and friendship. As Plantinga puts it, in those moments of pain a person needs not “philosophical enlightenment,” but rather “pastoral care.”16 Nevertheless, the existential and theoretical problems are not entirely divorced, for existential encounter certainly affects one’s theorizing, and one’s theories are not entirely disconnected from one’s experiences. Both sets of problems are important and need to be considered when discussing problems of evil.

Responding to Evil The reality of evil raises many questions, including those having to do with how best to respond to or eliminate it. These sorts of questions are no doubt some of the most important. They are in the genre of what is sometimes dubbed “practical problems of evil,” and they should—no doubt, they must—be the kinds of questions human

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beings engage with if we are to foster a world of true peace, harmony, love, and goodness. Along these lines philosopher Grace Jantzen makes the following relevant and insightful point: [The problem of evil as traditionally discussed] focuses on God rather than on human agency: why does God permit natural evils? Why does God permit human beings to do evil? Again, whatever the answer to these questions, and whether those evaluating the answers think them adequate or not, the focus of attention is diverted within this presentation away from what human beings are doing or might be doing to inflict or prevent evil, away from the earth and into the transcendent realm. . . . By refusing to engage with the question of the human distribution of evil . . . it is possible to evade questions of domination and victimization while still appearing to “deal with” the problem of evil.17 I certainly do not want to evade the practical dimensions of evil. I do not want to divert attention from the earth to the transcendent realm. As my father-in-law used to say, “Don’t be so heavenly minded that you are of no earthly good.” Indeed. In the final chapter we will return to this matter of responding to evil and I will attempt to provide some helpful and practical ideas on the matter. But if a concept is incoherent, it should not be believed. And some thinkers have argued that the concept of theism is incoherent, given the problems of evil. So we must examine these challenges. Thus, the central concern of this book has to do with intellectual problems raised by the reality of evil. These problems are not the moral and pragmatic ones of what should be done to ameliorate or eliminate pain and suffering, as nontrivial as those are. Rather, they are the theoretical problems of making sense of the reality of evil in the world in which we find ourselves, given the worldview we hold. The plausibility

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of a religion or worldview to some extent depends on its capacity for providing a coherent and livable schema for understanding our experiences of evil and good. As we will see throughout the pages ahead, the theoretical problems that arise because of evil confront all persons irrespective of their interpretation of the world, whether religious or nonreligious. As we are in a profound sense servile to our beliefs and ideas, exploring the issues that arise because of evil and how they relate to our broader understanding of the world is an important enterprise. We will examine conceptual problems raised by evil and suffering as they confront various worldviews. But the central theoretical problems of evil, as they have been historically developed in the English-speaking world, are focused on the alleged incompatibility of the coexistence of a good, loving, and all-powerful God on the one hand and evil on the other, for it is here that the problems seem most acute. So this is where we will begin: exploring the challenges and conundrums raised by these seemingly dissonant beliefs.

For Further Reading Adams, Marilyn M. and Robert M. Adams, eds. 1990. The Problem of Evil. New York: Oxford University Press. (A scholarly collection of essays from a variety of perspectives by leading philosophers.) Cottingham, John. 2017. “Evil and the Meaning of Life.” In Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Cottingham argues that redemption, as affirmed in the Judeo–Christian tradition, is a place to find meaning given the reality of evil, which fits with common human intuitions.) Feinberg, John S. 2004. The Many Faces of Evil: Theological Systems and the Problem of Evil. 3rd ed. Wheaton, IL: Crossway. (A Calvinist philosophical theologian tackles the problem of evil.) Griffin, David Ray. 2001. “Creation out of Nothing, Creation out of Chaos, and the Problem of Evil.” In Stephen T. Davis (ed.), Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. (Griffin presents a process theodicy.)

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Howard-Snyder, Daniel, ed. 1996. The Evidential Argument from Evil. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. (An important work on the subject.) Hume, David. 1955. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Parts 10 and 11. Edited by H. D. Aiken. New York: Haffner Publishing. (Hume is the classical skeptic of theodicy and Christian faith.) Lewis, C. S. 1962 The Problem of Pain. New York: Macmillan. (Lewis focuses on the value of pain and suffering as God’s “megaphone” to rouse a morally deaf world.) Mackie, J. L. 1982. The Miracle of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (See especially his chapter on the problem of evil from an atheist’s perspective.) Meister, Chad and Charles Taliaferro, general editors. 2018. The History of Evil in six volumes: Evil in Antiquity (Volume One); Evil in the Middle Ages (Volume Two); Evil in the Early Modern Age (Volume Three); Evil in the 18th and 19thCenturies (Volume Four); Evil in the Early 20th Century (Volume Five); Evil from the Mid-20th Century to Today (Volume Six). London and New York: Routledge. (A massive work on the history, scope, and nature of evil from a philosophical perspective.) Meister, Chad and James K. Dew, Jr. 2017. God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. (Five different Christian responses to the problem of evil.) Meister, Chad and Paul K. Moser. 2017. The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Thirteen leading scholars address various aspects of the problem of evil.) Peterson, Michael L. 1998. God and Evil: An Introduction to the Issues. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. (An excellent general introduction to the topic.)

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2 Problems of Evil I pray thee, cease thy counsel, Which falls into mine ears as profitless As water in a sieve: give me not counsel; Nor let comfort delight mine ear. For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently. —SHAKESPEARE, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, ACT V, SCENE 1

In the previous chapter we saw that the reality of evil poses difficulties for the major theistic religions, for they traditionally each affirm the existence of a perfectly good, all-knowing, and all-powerful deity— one who could, and seemingly should, eliminate the evil, pain, and suffering in the world. Yet evil persists. Why? If God exists, why did God create, and why does God permit, a world with such vast amounts of horror and terror? In this chapter we will home in on several specific problems of evil as they have been articulated in recent years. These problems have to do with reconciling belief in God with the reality of evil. Like evil itself, the problems are multifaceted.

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The Logical Argument from Evil On one formulation of the problem of evil, what’s called the logical problem or the logical argument from evil, the conclusion is certain: God cannot exist. In the mid-twentieth century this argument was developed most effectively by atheist philosopher J. L. Mackie. The central issue is the alleged logical inconsistency of the following two claims: 1 God (an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being) exists. and 2 Evil exists. The meaning of the charge of logical inconsistency should be fairly obvious. Two claims that are contradictory cannot both be true. Consider these two claims: 3 The United Nations was founded in 1945. 4 No international organizations were founded in 1945. Clearly, claims 3 and 4 cannot both be true in the same sense, for they violate the law of noncontradiction. On the widely held assumption that contradictory claims are necessarily false, if claims 1 and 2 are in indeed contradictions, at least one of them must be false. If it is true that evil exists (claim 2), and most people believe that it is, claim 1 must be false; God must not exist. In later chapters we will explore views that do not take it as a given that evil actually exists. But for now let’s grant this assumption: there really is objective evil in the world. Even so, it is not immediately clear that claims 1 and 2 are logically incompatible, as are 3 and 4. In attempting to demonstrate that they are, Mackie developed an argument, which can be delineated this way:

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i A wholly good being always eliminates evil as far as it can. ii There are no limits to what an omnipotent and omniscient being can do. iii So, if a wholly good, omnipotent, and omniscient being exists, it eliminates evil completely (from i and ii). iv Evil has not been eliminated completely. v Thus a wholly good, omnipotent, and omniscient being does not exist (from iii and iv).1 If this argument is sound (i.e., if the premises are true and the conclusion deductively follows from them, which it does), it provides proof that God’s existence is impossible—logically impossible. It is false that God exists. This argument is concise and, at first blush, persuasive. So the burden is on the theist to rebut the charge of logical inconsistency. The most significant rebuttal to date has been offered by Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga, in what he calls the free-will defense. In this rebuttal, Plantinga attempts to demonstrate that claims 1 and 2 can both be true—that they are not contradictory after all. He does this by proposing a third claim that is consistent with 1 and which, along with 1, implies 2. This third claim is simply that premise ii (that there are no limits to what an omnipotent and omniscient being can do) may be false. It could be that even an omnipotent and omniscient being has certain limitations. Plantinga uses contemporary logic and the notion of possible worlds to make his case (the phrase “possible worlds” is a semantic device that formalizes the notion of what the world might have been like; a statement is necessarily true, then, if and only if it is true in every possible world). Here is the crux of his argument: A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all

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else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren’t significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God’s omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.2 So Mackie’s logical argument from evil is unsuccessful because it is logically possible (it may be the case) that in creating a world with free creatures—a valuable world—God (an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being) may be unable to ensure that this world has no evil in it. And it may be the case that God would create such a world because it would be a very good world despite the evil that arises in it. Since premise ii might be false, the conclusion cannot be deduced with logical necessity from the premises. So the argument, as an illative or deductive proof, is flawed.3 It is important to note that Plantinga does not make the point that ii is false; only that it might be false. Since it might be false, the conclusion does not logically follow from the premises.4 Mackie and others have responded by arguing that, even granting that there may be limits to what an omnipotent being can do, it is nonetheless logically possible for God to create free agents who do only what is good, and that as an all-powerful and omniscient being, God (if God exists) could bring about a world in which such agents exist.

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If there is no logical impossibility in a man’s freely choosing the good on one, or on several occasions, there cannot be a logical impossibility of his freely choosing the good on every occasion. God was not, then, faced with the choice between making innocent automata and beings who, in acting freely would sometimes go wrong; there was open to him the obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely but always do right. Clearly, his failure to avail himself of this possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly good.5 So the question arises again: why didn’t God (if there is a God) create human beings who would only freely choose good rather than evil? Plantinga and others have replied that it may be the case that there are logically possible events or states of affairs regarding human choices that even an omnipotent being cannot bring about. For example, on a widely held understanding of free will—what is often called libertarian free will—a person’s free choices are truly up to the individual, not something or someone else (even God). So God could not determine the free actions of such individuals. Freedom of this type is incompatible with causal determinism, so God could not cause these free creatures to freely do only what is good, for that would be a logical contradiction. Furthermore, it can be argued, it is also possible that free will of this robust kind (free will that is incompatible with any sort of determinism) is a very great good. And it may well be that a world containing creatures with this sort of free will is more valuable than a world without such creatures. Consider a world with no free agents whatsoever, one which has only preprogrammed robots, for example. In such a world the robots would only be acting in ways they are determined to act. Their actions of apparent goodness, kindness, and generosity would in fact be actions that were not truly up to them.

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They would have prior causes that determine them. It seems plausible that it is possible that the former world—the one with creatures whose choices are truly up to them—is more valuable, all else being equal, than the one with robots and no free creatures. In this more valuable world, however, these free creatures could choose to do evil. That is what it means for an action to be up to the individual: he or she could choose to do it or not. So God may have a morally sufficient reason for not preventing evil completely; evil may be an unavoidable consequence of a very good world. Another argument raised in support of the logical problem of evil is that, while the free-will defense may succeed in undercutting the claim that moral evil is inconsistent with the existence of God, it does not address the problem of natural evil. The evils of nature are not brought about by the choices of free creatures. So granting that it may be the case that God (if God exists) should respect the free will of creatures and allow them to choose to do good or evil, God need not allow the evils of nature to exist. Countless examples could be cited here: earthquakes that devastate towns or villages; tsunamis that kill tens of thousands of people; forest fires caused by lightning that ravage flora and fauna; and so forth. Other examples are a bit more contentious, but are nevertheless often cited as cases of natural evil, such as predation (organisms or animals maintaining life by killing and feeding on other organisms or animals) and the evolutionary process of natural selection. Aren’t these sorts of events incompatible with the existence of an all-powerful and perfectly good God? Plantinga’s response is to suggest that it is at least logically possible that perhaps free, nonhuman persons are responsible for natural evils. Such nonhuman persons might include rebellious spirits. On some traditional Jewish, Christian, and Islamic accounts of the world, this is precisely the case. God created nonhuman beings, called angels, with free will. Some of these angelic beings turned against God and

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have been wreaking havoc on the world since its inception. This may even include wreaking havoc on the very processes of evolution. As long as these states of affairs are logical possibilities, the claim that the existence of God and natural evils are logically inconsistent is rebutted. It will no doubt strike most readers as bizarre that in order to rebut the logical argument from evil, one must resort to positing fallen angelic beings (demons) as the cause of natural evil! Strange though it may be, it should be kept in mind that most theists who make use of the free-will defense, Plantinga included, are not claiming to actually believe this to be the case. They are just noting that the logic of this argument from evil is not as airtight as its defenders maintain. There are other possibilities. Unlike claims 3 and 4, then, 1 and 2 need not be logically contradictory. God and evil can logically coexist. These rebuttals to the logical argument from evil have been quite effective. In fact, most theists and atheists now agree that the logical argument has been decisively rebutted. For example, leading atheist philosopher William Rowe writes the following: 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 extravagant claim. Indeed, granted incompatibilism [that free will and determinism are incompatible], there is a fairly compelling argument for the view that the existence of evil is logically consistent with the existence of the theistic God.6 Philosopher Paul Draper, who has his own versions of arguments from evil (as we will see), agrees that the logical problem of evil doesn’t work, but he does so for a different reason. He argues that the first premise of the argument is problematic. Again, the first premise is this: “A wholly good being always eliminates evil as far as it can.” Draper maintains that this claim is problematic, for in order to be

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true it must be demonstrated that God has no morally good reason to allow any particular evil to exist. But establishing that the existence of a particular evil and the existence of God are incompatible cannot be accomplished. Draper puts it this way: To understand why this is so [i.e., why the existence of a particular evil and God are not necessarily incompatible], it is crucial to understand that the inability to produce things like round squares that are logically impossible to produce or to know statements like 2 + 3 = 10 that are logically impossible to know does not count as a lack of power or a lack of knowledge. In other words, not even an all-powerful and all-knowing being can have more power or more knowledge than it is logically possible for a being to have. Suppose, then, that some good, G, that is worth my suffering . . . logically implies that I suffer (or that God permits me to suffer). This certainly seems possible. . . . Such goods would be known to an all-knowing being even if they are beyond our ken. Further, if there are such goods, then not even an all-powerful and allknowing being could produce them without allowing me to suffer and hence even an all-powerful and all-knowing being could have a good moral reason to permit my suffering.7 Since one cannot establish the truth of premise 1, the argument cannot get off the ground. So he concurs that the argument is stymied: “I do not see how it is possible to construct a convincing logical argument from evil against theism.”8 The rebuttals to the logical argument, as important as they are, do not put an end to the discussion of evil, however, nor do they solve all the problems related to God and evil. Far from it. For one thing, while Mackie’s version of the logical argument from evil has been the most discussed, it is not the only version. And other versions may still be viable. As Graham Oppy notes, “while it is plausible

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that the official logical argument from evil of Mackie is ‘dead’ . . . it is obvious that there are other logical arguments from evil that are not ‘killed’.”9 Nevertheless, most challenges to the existence and goodness of God, given the reality of evil and suffering, have in recent times shifted from the strong claim that theism is necessarily false given that evil exists to the more reserved claim that theism (as traditionally understood) is probably false given the kind and amount of evil there is in the world. This type of argument has a variety of forms that attempt to demonstrate not that claims 1 and 2 are logically incompatible, but rather that it is more reasonable to believe there is no God, given the reality of evil than to believe that God exists.

Evidential Arguments from Evil William Rowe’s Evidential Argument Evidential arguments attempt to demonstrate that the existence of evil in the world counts as inductive evidence against the claim that God exists. One form of the evidential argument from evil— one considered by many to be the most persuasive—is based on the assumption, often agreed on by theists and atheists alike, that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being would prevent the existence of gratuitous or meaningless evil. The most widely known formulation of this argument is offered by William Rowe: (i) There exist instances of intense suffering that an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. (ii) An omnipotent, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could

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not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. (iii) Therefore, there does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.10 Rowe maintains that this is an evidential or probabilistic argument since premise i is probably true (he believes), though not decisive. If the first premise is probably true, since premise ii is true by definition (most theists and atheists accept this claim), it follows that the conclusion is probably true: God probably does not exist. At first glance it seems that theists and atheists would agree with both premises. Since this argument is valid in form, if one agrees with the two premises, the conclusion follows: an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being (probably) does not exist. Rowe offers a particular example of natural evil to support this claim. The example includes a fawn affectionately called “Bambi” that experiences pointless and terrible suffering in a forest fire, which leads to its death. He describes the situation this way: Consider again the case of the fawn’s suffering. Is it reasonable to believe that there is some greater good so intimately connected to that suffering that even an omnipotent, omniscient being could not have obtained that good without permitting that suffering or some evil at least as bad? It certainly does not appear reasonable to believe this. Nor does it seem reasonable to believe that there is some evil at least as bad as the fawn’s suffering such that an omnipotent being simply could not have prevented it without permitting the fawn’s suffering. But even if it should somehow be reasonable to believe either of these things of the fawn’s suffering, we must then ask whether it is reasonable to believe either of these things of all the instances of seemingly pointless human and animal suffering

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that occur daily in our world. And surely the answer to this more general question must be no. Rowe’s question of whether an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented the fawn’s apparently pointless suffering should be haunting for the theist. For, Rowe adds, surely such a being “could have easily prevented the fawn from being horribly burned, or, given the burning, could have spared the fawn the intense suffering by quickly ending its life, rather than allowing the fawn to lie in terrible agony for several days.”11 Here is a case, then, that is representative of countless examples of suffering that actually occur in the world, and this gives reason to believe that premise i is probably true. The poor fawn’s painful death does not seem to be a necessary condition for some greater good. Since it is likely that premises i and ii are true, the conclusion that God does not exist is also probably true. Theists have responded to this argument in various ways. A few have challenged premise ii, but most agree with it. So the debate generally centers on the first premise. Some claim that there are good reasons to believe that premise i is false, while others claim that we are not in an appropriate epistemic (knowledge) position to know that premise i is true. The first approach involves theodicy— the attempt to justify God and the ways of God, given the evil and suffering in the world. We will explore several theodicies in the next two chapters. A second approach involves questioning the reasons one might affirm premise i. Rowe asks whether it is “reasonable to believe that there is some greater good so intimately connected to that [fawn’s] suffering that even an omnipotent, omniscient being could not have obtained that good without permitting that suffering or some evil at least as bad?” His conclusion is that it certainly does not appear reasonable to believe so. Since there does not appear to be

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any good or any sufficient reason for affirming so, he maintains, there probably is not one. What are we to make of this claim?

Noseeum Arguments and Skeptical Theism It is no doubt true that sometimes when something does not appear, we can reasonably conclude that it does not exist. However, it is also true that the inference from “does not appear” to “does not exist” is not always a good one to make. Stephen Wykstra has called arguments such as this “noseeum arguments,” and they take this form: As far as we can surmise, there are no X’s. Therefore, there are no X’s. In Rowe’s argument it is alleged that after carefully looking for a greater good that might come about from some gratuitous evil (such as the suffering and death of Bambi), none can be found. So it is reasonable to conclude that there are none.12 But is this a plausible inference? Noseeum arguments can be strong or weak, good, or bad. Suppose a friend told you that, after carefully studying the stars, she believes that you will soon win a lot of money. After examining her alleged astrological evidence for this claim (horoscopes and Tarot cards), it doesn’t seem to you that what she says is reasonable to believe. You don’t see any real evidence in what she has presented to you, and you have reason to believe that astrology of this sort is suspect. In this case, your noseeum inference that her claim is false is a good one. But consider another example. Suppose that you go to an alternative health practitioner with a terrible pain in your chest. The “doctor” takes a careful look at your eyes and says that nothing seems amiss. You inquire about the significance of looking at eyes for heart conditions,

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ask about further medical testing, such as an electrocardiogram, chest X-ray, or stress test—even a stethoscope would be good! But he says that since he doesn’t see anything wrong in your eyes, no further testing is necessary. He concludes that your heart is quite healthy. In this case, the noseeum inference is a bad one. So what about the atheist’s inference from evil? Is it more like the first example or the second? Some theists, including those affirming what’s called skeptical theism (skeptical theists are theists who are skeptical about a human being’s ability to make informed judgments about what God has done or would do in any particular situation), claim that the atheist’s inference is like the second.13 This is akin to the words of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah who, speaking on behalf of God, says the following: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (55:8–9) God’s ways are inscrutable, so we are in no position to judge as improbable the claim that there are great goods secured by God through the various evils that exist. There may well be many great goods brought about by evil acts, which we cannot comprehend, given our cognitive (and other) limitations. And there may be other good reasons for allowing evil. Since God’s ways are so far beyond the ability of finite minds to grasp, we are simply not justified in affirming that there are evils that have no point, even though they may appear to us this way. An analogy may help. A number of years ago I was playing chess with my son. He was a novice at the game (I must admit that I’m no expert myself, but I was several years ahead of him!), and

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he failed to understand why I made a certain move in the game. At first he thought the move was wrongheaded and that I had made a detrimental mistake. But alas, I proved him wrong. Given his limited understanding of chess, he was not in an appropriate epistemic place to conclude that the move was pointless. He was simply not able to recognize its purpose.14 Something akin to this claim emerges in another place in the Bible. In the book of Job, after suffering great personal harm and loss, Job demands a response from God. “Then the Lord answered Job . . . ‘Who is this that darkens my counsel by words without knowledge? . . . Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements . . .?’” (38:1–4). As the questioning continues, Job is brought to silence before God, for he realizes the depths of his own cognitive limitations with respect to God and the creation. He finally responds: “I know that you can do all things. . . . Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (42:2–3). In Islam, too, the inscrutable ways of God is a prominent theme. In the Qur’an, surah 2.155–57, we find these words: Be sure we shall test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss in goods or lives or the fruits (of your toil), but give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere, Who say, when afflicted with calamity: “To God We belong, and to Him is our return.” They are those on whom (Descend) blessings from God, and Mercy, and they are the ones that receive guidance. Skeptical theists maintain that we do not know the wisdom behind the occurrences of evil and suffering in our lives; we cannot obtain a proper perspective on such complex matters for our minds are so far from the greatness of the Almighty’s infinite mind that to suppose we could understand such matters would be

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pure hubris. In faith, we turn to God, and we trust that he is both just and good. Perhaps the most persuasive argument for skeptical theism, CORNEA, was offered by Stephen Wykstra. CORNEA is an acronym for the Condition on Reasonable Epistemic Access. According to this argument, inferences from “I see no X” to “There is no X” are justified only if it is reasonable, all things considered, for one to believe that if there were in fact an X, one would be likely to see X. For example, in following the CORNEA strategy, the inference from “I see nothing wrong in your eyes” to “Your heart is fine” would not pass muster. Similarly, skeptical theists argue, the inference from “As far as we can surmise, there is no compensating good for this or that particular evil (or set of evils)” to “God does not exist” does not pass muster either. There are simply too many variables of which we are unaware to make such assessments. Consider another example, which drives home the point. Those working in the field of chaos theory have discovered that the slightest perturbations of the early conditions of a dynamical system can have significant effects on larger systems, which would have been impossible to predict given empirical observations. Reflecting on this, William Lane Craig makes the following point: I want to argue that we’re just not in a good position to assess the probability of whether God lacks morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evils that occur. Take an analogy from chaos theory. In chaos theory, scientists tell us that even the flutter of a butterfly’s wings could produce forces that would set in motion causes that would produce a hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean. And yet looking at that butterfly palpitating on a branch, it is impossible in principle to predict such an outcome. Similarly, an evil in the world, say, a child’s dying of cancer or a brutal murder of a man,

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could set a ripple effect in history going, such that God’s morally sufficient reason for permitting it might not emerge until centuries later or maybe in another country. We’re just not in a position to be able to make these kinds of probability judgments.15 There have been a number of responses to skeptical theism, including Rowe’s argument that for the skeptical theist there could never be any reason for doubting God’s existence given the presence of evil, no matter how horrific and extensive it may be. The skeptical theist, he argues, has made the divide between divine knowledge and human knowledge too wide—wider than what theism affirms. While a modified view of God, which widens the human/divine cognitive chasm may suffice as a response to premise i, theism per se does not. In other words, Rowe maintains, Wykstra has unjustifiably imported the further notions of God’s mysterious and incomprehensible purposes and human cognitive limitations into the argument, which renders it invalid as stated. Rowe makes a fair point, but the theist of the Abrahamic faiths need not see this as a liability, for the human limitations and inscrutability of God propounded by Wykstra are and historically have been widely held among theologians of these traditions.

Paul Draper’s Evidential Argument A move by Paul Draper advanced the discussion of the evidential argument.16 Here is a very simplified version of his more technical argument. Draper claims that earlier presentations of the evidential argument are unsatisfactory because they do not take into account alternative explanations of the pain and pleasure that exist in the world. He compares theism (which he defines as the existence of “an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person who created the universe”) with an alternative, what he calls “the hypothesis of

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indifference,” to find out which of the two best explains the evil in the world. For the hypothesis of indifference, “neither the nature nor the condition of sentient beings on earth is the result of benevolent or malevolent actions performed by nonhuman persons.”17 On the theistic account, since God is morally perfect, there must be morally good reasons for allowing biologically useless pain, and there must be morally good reasons for producing pleasures even if such pleasures are not biologically useful. But given our observations of the pains and pleasures experienced by sentient creatures, including their biologically gratuitous experiences, the hypothesis of indifference provides a more reasonable account than theism. This alternative hypothesis to theism, in other words, is more likely to be true than the theistic one. This argument can be countered by contending that for all we know, in every possible world that exhibits a high degree of complexity—a world such as ours with sentient, intelligent life—the laws of nature are the same or have the same general features as our actual laws. So we cannot assume that the distribution of pain and pleasure in a world with a high degree of complexity such as ours, including the pains and pleasures reflected in biological evolution, would be any different given theism. We are simply not in an epistemic position to assign a reliable probability either way, so we cannot make the judgment that theism is less likely than the hypothesis of indifference.18 Up to this point it has been assumed that the theist carries the burden of proof. But the question can be raised whether the theist does, after all, hold the burden, or whether other positions share an equal burden, or whether indeed other positions have more of a burden. Perhaps this is a case where issues of world view are relevant, for if one has reasons for affirming atheism prior to attending to cases of evil, especially apparently gratuitous evil, then it may well

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be that the burden lies with the theist to demonstrate how such cases of evil can be justified given theism. However, if one has reasons for affirming theism prior to attending to cases of evil, especially apparently gratuitous evil, perhaps the burden of proof lies with the atheist to demonstrate how such cases of evil cannot be justified, given theism. And if one has reasons for affirming some other worldview—Hinduism, say—then perhaps the burden is placed elsewhere. Furthermore, it may well be that the atheist or the Hindu (or what have you) has her own challenges with respect to the reality of evil and suffering. These are important issues that we will pick up in later chapters.

Concluding Reflections The problems of evil spelled out in this chapter are major objections to the coherence of belief in the God of theism, given the reality of evil in the world. They are indeed troubling arguments for theists and should not be easily dismissed. I have had many discussions with theists who attempt to trivialize the problems of evil (with atheists, too, but that will come up in a later chapter), but then further into the dialogue realize they have not really explored the theoretical dimensions of the problems. The difficulties are significant, and they should not be minimized. As we have seen, though, they are not necessarily so formidable as to make belief in a morally perfect and powerful deity illogical or rationally unwarranted. At this point we have only explored responses to the theoretical problems of evil—what are frequently called defenses in which the scenarios depicted are logically possible ones. We have not yet explored any attempts to justify God and the ways of God, given the

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evil and suffering that exists in the world. That is to say, we have not yet explored theodicy in which the scenarios depicted in the explanations are offered as actually true. The next chapter moves us into the heart of such attempts.

For Further Reading Adams, Marilyn M. and Robert M. Adams. 1990. The Problem of Evil. New York: Oxford University Press. (A scholarly collection of essays from a variety of perspectives by leading philosophers.) Draper, Paul. 2017. “God, Evil, and the Nature of Light.” In Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 65–84. (A recent evidential argument that is worth a careful read.) Feinberg, John S. 2004. The Many Faces of Evil: Theological Systems and the Problem of Evil. 3rd ed. Wheaton, IL: Crossway. Hume, David. 1955. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Parts 10 and 11. Edited by H. D. Aiken. New York: Haffner Publishing. Mackie, J. L. 1982. The Miracle of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (See especially his chapter on the problem of evil.) Martin, Michael. 1990. Atheism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. (Includes a wide-ranging critique of theistic responses to the problem of evil; note especially chapters 14–17.) Oppy, Graham. 2017. “Logical Arguments and Free-Will Defences.” In Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 45–64. (An up-to-date argument on the subject by a leading atheistic philosopher.) Plantinga, Alvin. 1977. God, Freedom and Evil. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. (A classic account of the free-will defense.) Taliaferro, Charles. 2017. “Beauty and the Problem of Evil.” In Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Taliaferro advances four reasons why responses to the problem of evil are incomplete if they do not include the aesthetics of beauty and ugliness.) Winter, Timothy. 2017. “Islam and the Problem of Evil.” In Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil.

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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A leading Islamic theologian addresses the problem of evil from the perspective of Islam.) Wykstra, Stephen. 2017. “A Skeptical Theist View.” In Chad Meister and James K. Dew, Jr. (eds.), God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views, Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 99–127. (The most up-to-date expression of skeptical theism by its most ardent defender.)

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3 Free-Will and Soul-Making Theodicies Epicurus’ old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? When then is evil? —DAVID HUME1

Up to this point we examined the nature of evil and various problems of evil. We focused on problems of evil that confront theists, and we found that while there are indeed serious objections to belief in a beneficent and all-powerful deity, theists are not necessarily unreasonable in their belief that God exists despite these objections. There are plausible rebuttals to the objections, even if they are only logically possible scenarios. Some theists are satisfied to leave it there. God is God, and who are we to question? God and the ways of God are beyond our understanding. Other theists are not so satisfied with merely having responses to evil that might be true. Instead, they want to know whether there are greater goods that actually justify the evil, pain, and suffering in the world. They are looking for answers that in fact are, or at least probably are, true. This is the role of theodicy.

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A theodicy is thus different from a defense. The aim of a defense is to demonstrate that the arguments from evil are unsuccessful, given a possible scenario or set of scenarios, whereas the aim of a theodicy is to justify God and the ways of God in a world filled with evil. A theodicy takes on the burden of attempting to vindicate the reality of God by providing a plausible explanation for evil. As such, it often takes the following general form: 1 God, an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being, will prevent/ eliminate evil unless there is a good reason or set of reasons for not doing so. 2 There is evil in the world. 3 Therefore, God must have a good reason or set of reasons for not preventing/eliminating evil. There are a variety of attempts to demonstrate what that good reason is, or those good reasons are, for the existence of evil in the world. Two of the most prominent are the free-will and soul-making theodicies. We explore them in this chapter, and in the next I will develop what could be called a theodicy of fulfillment—a view that takes into consideration important factors present in and absent from these other two.

A Free-Will Theodicy One of the most prominent theodicies historically was formulated by the Christian philosopher/theologian Augustine (354–430 CE) in  the  early fifth century of the Common Era. Augustine has been one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the Western world. His spiritual pilgrimage involved evolving from skepticism as a young adult to Bishop of Hippo in his later years. His writings on human

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free will, which are central to his understanding of evil, spanned his career, and virtually every medieval philosopher of renown in the Christian West has interacted with his work on this subject. Augustine spent much time thinking about and writing on the subject of evil. From his earlier works, including On the Free Choice of the Will, to his more mature works, The City of God and Confessions, and many works in between, he continually turned to the notion of evil. Two central questions were at the heart of his thinking on the subject: First, what is the nature of evil? And second, where does evil come from? Augustine affirmed the commonly held Hebrew– Christian view that the world God created is good, indeed, very good. Everything that God created is fundamentally good and has a good purpose. But evil is also a real part of this world, so what is it? And how did it arise? Augustine’s answer is rooted in the thinking of the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus who lived in the third century. It was then coopted by Augustine more than a century later and has been a significant part of Christian thinking on the matter ever since. Augustine argued that while God is indeed the creator of every thing, evil is not a thing, it has no being. It is, rather, a privatio boni—a privation of the good. By “privation” Plotinus (and later, Augustine) meant the absence of a thing; the absence of being. To clarify this idea, Augustine used the example of a person who is blind. Blindness is not in itself a thing— not a substantial reality—let alone a good thing. It is a privation of seeing. Evil, he argues, is like blindness. It is a lack of good. It is the absence of something that should be there. Everything that has being is good, unless it has become tarnished or corrupted. Evil is one way or another the going wrong of something that is good in itself. But we are still left with the question that if God created a very good world, what brought about the evil? How did this privation and corruption arise in the world, if not from the Creator of the world? For

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Augustine, the state of the world in which human beings first found themselves was one of absolute perfection and goodness. But unlike its unlimited and immutable Creator, it is finite and changeable. It was this mutability, this potential for change, in particular with regard to the will, that opened the door to privation and corruption. Here are Augustine’s words on the matter: “What is evil is the turning of the will away from the unchangeable good and toward changeable goods. And since this turning is not coerced, but voluntary, it is justly and deservedly punished with misery.” He continues: But perhaps you are going to ask what is the source of this movement by which the will turns away from the unchangeable good toward a changeable good. This movement is certainly evil, even though free will itself is to be counted among good things, since no one can live rightly without it. For if that movement, that turning away from the Lord God, is undoubtedly sin, surely we cannot say that God is the cause of sin. So that movement is not from God. But then where does it come from? If I told you that I don’t know, you might be disappointed; but that would be the truth. For one cannot know that which is nothing.2 It is important to see free will playing a central role in the way Augustine attempts to make sense of a world that God created, which has evil in its midst. Augustine’s narrative begins with the creation of the Garden of Eden, an idyllic paradise in which there was no evil, no suffering, no pain. Adam and Eve were created ex nihilo, out of nothing, and placed in the Garden in a state of moral perfection. So in what manner did evil emerge in such a blissful state? The story is a familiar one. Some of God’s creations, most notably this first human pair, were made in God’s image. This image reflected God in creativity, love, and moral choice. But at some point along the way the will of these two persons

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turned from God, who is the summum bonum (supreme good), to lesser goods. This turning of the will from God and the supreme good to lesser goods was the origin of evil, and it ushered into the world more evil. In Christian theology ever since Augustine, this event has been referred to as “the Fall.” It happened first with the angels, spearheaded by Satan (the supreme fallen angel), and then, after being tempted by him, with the first human couple. For Augustine, this turning of the will accounts for the moral evil in the world. Furthermore, this moral failing, or sin, brought with it not only guilt, shame, and punishment for human beings, but also tragic cosmic consequences, for it marshaled into the universe all manner of pain and suffering in the natural world. It brought with it, that is, the divine curse. God’s curse, or punishment, then, for the sin of Adam and Eve, accounts for much of the turmoil and upheaval in the world; natural evils are thus the effects of sin and the penal consequences of sin. The Fall was thus no insignificant event. It was a disaster of cataclysmic, cosmic proportions and accounts for the origin of the moral and natural evil in the world. Augustine’s theodicy does not end without resolution, however. For in the eschaton—the end of the world as we know it—God will rectify matters when he judges the world in righteousness, ushering into his eternal kingdom those persons who have been saved through the atoning work of Christ and sending to eternal perdition those persons who are wicked and disobedient. Augustine’s theodicy can be summarized this way: 1 God created the universe and everything in it was good; the first human beings of the creation were placed in a perfect paradise. 2 Some of God’s creation—namely persons—were given the good gift of

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3 freedom of the will (having freedom of the will is better than not having it, since a moral universe requires it, and a moral universe is better than a non-moral one). 4 Some of these created persons—first angels and then human beings—freely 5 chose to turn from God and the good; that is, they “sinned” and fell from their 6 state of moral and spiritual perfection; this is “the Fall.” 7 This turning of the will, or sin, ushered into the world all manner of moral and natural evil. 8 There are two dimensions to evil: a) its origin, which is misdirected will, and b) its nature, which is metaphysical deprivation, or privation, or corruption of the good. 9 God will eventually rectify matters by bringing evil to an end when he judges the world in righteousness, marshaling into God’s eternal kingdom those persons who have been saved through Christ and sending to eternal hell those persons who are wicked and disobedient. Some version of a free-will theodicy has been the most prominent type of theodicy throughout Western history, and is still held by some in one form or another today. While free-will theodicy does, in one sense, exonerate God from evil by placing responsibility for it upon creatures, and while some version of it has been extensively advocated by theists for centuries, it has been widely criticized in recent times. One problem is that, even granting a robust view of libertarian free will, could God not have prevented the consequences of the evil decisions made by free creatures—consequences having to do with both moral and natural evils? To list some specific examples, could God not have prevented

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the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 in which over 200,000 people died and over a million were left homeless? Could God not have stopped the Black Plague in the fourteenth century that wiped out well over 30 percent of Europe’s population? And while perhaps not being able to avert members of the Nazi regime from freely deciding to torture and execute millions of Jews, or Joseph Stalin from choosing to have millions of Russian peasants executed, could God not have orchestrated events in such a way that totalitarian leaders such as these failed in their attempts, thus preventing the massive and horrific manslaughters of the past and present? In other words, while a freewill theodicy may account for some of the moral and natural evils that exist, it does not seem to provide an answer for why there is so much evil, and why there is so much evil that seems utterly horrific and gratuitous. Furthermore, would not a world without free will be better than a world with free will if evil of the magnitude we have in this world is its result? Some have argued so. But free will certainly seems to be a great value, and perhaps this value is great enough that God is perfectly justified in not thwarting the consequences of bad events caused by it, even if they are horrific. For example, how could a person love another without free will? How could meaningful relationships exist without the freedom to choose the other? Perhaps there is value in the experiences that happen to individuals because of evil events after all. And how do we know that there are not other goods that result from evil actions—goods that would not have arisen without them, including the virtues of compassion, mercy, and courage? This of course brings up the issue addressed in the last chapter regarding skeptical theism. It does seem reasonable, if not likely, that we are simply not intellectually capable of making fully informed judgments about complex matters of this sort. It may well be that the complexities of our world are just too vast and multifarious for finite minds to

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understand whether there could be moral justification for great evils. But we can certainly attempt to do so! There is another problem, however, that has been raised against Augustine’s free-will theodicy, given the modern scientific understandings of the biological and social development of Homo sapiens. A significant majority of biologists maintain that it does not seem very reasonable to believe that human beings began in a state of moral and spiritual maturity and perfection (a view usually associated with the notion that the universe began about six thousand years ago) and then fell into a state of moral depravity as depicted in Augustine’s notion of the Fall and original sin and a strictly scientifically literal interpretation of the early chapters of the book of Genesis.3 The story of human history is now understood by the consensus of the scientific community to be one of evolutionary development and moral and social progress rather than the devolution depicted in some interpretations of the biblical creation account. Human civilization, it is argued, seems to have been advancing over the last hundred thousand years or so, and this advancement has included biological, moral, and spiritual progress. There certainly has been progress over the last several thousand years. Looking back at just the last several millennia, for example, it’s doubtful that many people today would be happy to return to the moral imperatives of the Code of Hammurabi or even of the Old Testament, or to the legal status allotted to women and minority groups, which was maintained throughout most of recorded human history.4 Furthermore, many of the hard sciences, including geology, paleobiology, and genetics, have seemingly demonstrated that natural evils existed long before the emergence of human life, or any conscious life for that matter, and so could not have been the consequence of misdirected human will.5 It seems that evil, at least in the form of

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suffering and pain, existed long before human beings ever did. This is perhaps the most devastating objection to Augustine’s theodicy, for, given the current consensus of science it could not have been that human choice brought about all the evil and misery that exists in the world. Even granting that consensus does not, however, doom every aspect of the theodicy. Free will can still play a significant role in theodicy, even given the evolutionary theory. Perhaps, for example, the first Homo sapiens developed moral awareness and made choices that had significant moral consequences. Evolution does not necessarily negate the existence of a first pair of morally free hominids. But it does seem to contradict the notion that humans began in a perfectly good moral state a short time ago in world history and are responsible (along with fallen angels) for the origin of all of the moral and natural evil that exists in our world.6 In sum, Augustine’s theodicy, as he developed it, is incongruent with the consensus of modern science, but even so his intuition of the essential role of free will in theodicy need not be jettisoned. Another attempt at theodicy includes this central element of free will but provides a more consistent fit with the current scientific consensus of the natural world and its history.

A Soul-Making Theodicy Based on the work of the early Christian theologian Irenaeus (c.130–c.202 CE) as well as insights from the nineteenth-century German theologian F. D. E. Schleiermacher, philosopher John Hick (1992–2012) developed a theodicy that stands, in some ways, in stark contrast to Augustine’s approach. Hick argues that his theodicy is more plausible, given the contemporary sensibilities rooted in science and the most up-to-date scholarship in religion, the history

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of religion, theology, and other disciplines. In Hick’s view, God did not create a paradise six thousand years ago with two perfect human beings who then misused their free will and so brought about a grand moral and metaphysical defect in the universe. Instead, God created the universe billions of years ago as a good place—a place of value, purpose, and meaning—but no paradise, for developing morally mature human beings. Through natural, Darwinian processes, morally aware conscious beings evolved out of inert, impersonal matter. The first such beings would reflect brute selfishness and selfcenteredness but would eventually have the opportunity, through struggle and individual choice, to advance to a higher state of moral and spiritual awareness and maturity. The world is thus a grand character-making (or what Hick calls “soul-making”) environment, an environment that requires challenge and struggle to produce the results God desired. “God’s purpose,” as Hick puts it, was not to construct a paradise whose inhabitants would experience a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of pain. The world is seen, instead, as a place of “soul making” or person making in which free beings, grappling with the tasks and challenges of their existence in a common environment, may become “children of God” and “heirs of eternal life.” Our world, with all its rough edges, is the sphere in which this second and harder stage of the creative process is taking place.7 As Hick sees it, the problem with an early paradise world, such as the one depicted in the Garden of Eden story (understood in a certain literalistic way, in any case) in which there is no possibility of struggle—no pain and suffering and hardship—is that saintliness may be unattainable in a world like that. But there are elements of struggle and difficulty that seem to be necessary for moral growth. In a paradise world,

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No one would ever injure anyone else; the murderer’s knife would turn to paper or his bullets to thin air; the bank safe, robbed of a million dollars, would miraculously become filled with another million dollars; fraud, deceit, conspiracy, and treason would somehow always leave the fabric of society undamaged. . . . The reckless driver would never meet with disaster. There would be no need to work, since no harm could result from avoiding work; there would be no call to be concerned for others in time of need or danger, for in such a world there could be no real needs or dangers.8 Richard Swinburne makes a related point: The less [God] allows men to bring about large scale horrors, the less the freedom and responsibility he gives to them. What in effect the objection is asking is that a God should make a toy-world, a world where things matter, but not very much; where we can choose and our choices can make a small difference but the real choices remains God’s. For he simply would not allow us the choice of doing real harm, or through our negligence, allow real harm to occur. He would be like an over-protective parent who will not let his child out of his sight for a moment.9 In a “toy-world,” a world of no real needs, dangers, or difficulties, many virtues such as courage, compassion, and generosity would be completely unattainable. If God desired to bring about creatures who reflected such virtues, evil (at least in the form of struggle and pain) would be a crucial, indeed for Hick a logically necessary, component. “For humans to be created already in this perfect state is logically impossible, because in its spiritual aspect it involves coming freely to uncoerced consciousness of God from a situation of epistemic distance, and in its moral aspect, freely choosing the good.”10

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Evil then, argues Hick, is not the result of perfect persons choosing to sin, but rather in some senses is an inevitable aspect of an environment that is necessary for developing persons of mature moral character. By placing moral beings in the demanding, even fractious environment of our world, through their ability to choose what is right and good they can gradually develop into the mature persons that God desires them to be, exhibiting such virtues as courage, honesty, compassion, and selfless love. This soul-making theodicy contains the element of free will that the Augustinian theodicy had, but it places the role of free will in the midst of developing persons over eons of time rather than in the midst of perfect persons who lived a rather short time ago. Hick’s theodicy also has God continuing his efforts in the development of human persons even in the afterlife, by allowing them noncoercive opportunities to love and choose the good so that eventually everyone will have the opportunity to experience moral perfection and so be brought into a full and proper relationship with God. According to this view, because of the universal love of God, every person may, and probably will, ultimately experience redemption. To summarize the soul-making theodicy, God created a world that includes evil, suffering, and hardship for the purpose of developing morally and spiritually mature persons. The process has taken billions of years, beginning with unconscious matter, and it won’t be completed until some distant time in the future when human persons (and perhaps other types of conscious moral agents) will have reached full moral and spiritual maturity. We can sketch this theodicy as follows: 1 God created a good world, but that world is a challenging environment for developing human persons both morally and spiritually. 2 Through natural, evolutionary means, God brought about such persons who have.

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3 Freedom of the will and the capacity to mature in love and goodness. 4 As human persons are placed in this religiously ambiguous and ethically demanding environment, through their free will they have the opportunity to choose what is right and good and thus develop into the mature persons that God desires them to be (exhibiting the virtues of patience, courage, generosity, etc.). 5 Evil is the result of both the creation of a soul-making world and of the human choice to turn against the good (i.e., to sin). 6 God will continue to work with human (and perhaps other) moral agents, even in the afterlife as necessary, by allowing them opportunities to love and choose the good, for the purpose of eventually creating perfected finite persons. There is a simplicity and elegance to this theodicy, and it meshes well with the current scientific consensus about the world. Is it a plausible theodicy? Hick specifies what he takes to be the methodological requirements for theodicy: The two main demands upon a theodicy hypothesis are that it be (1) internally coherent, and (2) consistent with the data both of the religious tradition on which it is based, and of the world, in respect both of the latter’s general character as revealed by scientific enquiry and of the specific facts of moral and natural evil.11 Does his theodicy satisfy these demands? At first blush, it does seem to do so. Yet it is overshadowed by a major objection: while it may be true that a character-forming environment cannot be a paradise, the degree and the extent of pain and suffering that exist in the world are surely unjustified. Why did there exist an Auschwitz, say, or medieval torture chambers? Why did the Black Plague occur? Why the great

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tsunamis? Could not mature persons be created or developed by God without these kinds of horrors? To make matters worse, some evils seem to be character-destroying rather than character-building. Some individuals do not improve through the hardships they endure; oftentimes the difficulties in one’s life cause it to end in utter tragedy. Think of a young child with a debilitating disease, who is regularly mocked and then dies at an early age; or a woman who is brutally raped, held captive, and then murdered days later; or a father who inadvertently runs over his young daughter with his automobile. Or what about the doe that suffers and dies in a forest fire? Or the whale that gets beached and dies without notice? Do such examples of horrific and apparently gratuitous evil not count against a theodicy like this? A soul-making theodicist might respond by claiming that apparently pointless evils are not, in fact, without purpose and merit after all. The kinds of sympathy and compassion, for example, that are evoked from such seemingly indiscriminate and unfair miseries are very great goods in and of themselves—goods that would not arise without the miseries appearing as unfair and indiscriminate. Even though God did not intend or need any particular evils, such as Auschwitz, for his character-forming purposes, God did need to create an environment where such evils were a real possibility. So while each individual instance of evil may not be justified by a particular greater good, the existence of a world where evil is possible is necessary for a world where character formation takes place. Such a view does not seem entirely implausible. In addition, while there are cases in which difficulties in individuals’ lives do breed bitterness, anger, fear, selfishness, and a general lessening of virtuous character, if there is an afterlife God could well continue this process of character-forming until a person has had the opportunity to fully mature. Such a view has a long

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history in Christianity and other faith traditions. Furthermore, as we will see below and in the last chapter, an afterlife may also provide future goods that are great enough to justify even the worst horrors experienced in this life. Yet there remain some glaring difficulties. For one, what about all of those many life forms that suffered and died in the history of our planet? Were they mere evolutionary expedients for the future soulmaking of Homo sapiens? A second criticism is that Hick seems to assume the classical concept of divine omnipotence.12 As will be seen in the next chapter, this is problematic for there are some significant constraints on divine power that need to be taken into consideration in crafting a plausible theodicy.

Concluding Reflections In this chapter we examined two major theodicies, the classical Augustinian and the more recent soul-making. They each provide insights into thinking about the problem of evil. Yet they are unsatisfactory for reasons noted above (among others). Perhaps this criticism is unwarranted with respect to soul making. Philosopher Eleonore Stump clarifies the role of theodicy: [The] project of theodicy is different from the project of explaining the suffering of any particular person. In this respect, theodicy resembles clinical psychology or embryology or any other body of knowledge in which the possession of a general theory is not the same as the ability to apply that theory in any given particular case. Why this person should have become sick in this way, given her genetics and environment, may be mysterious to us, not because we lack the relevant theory, but because the information about this particular person that is necessary in order to apply the general

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theory to her case is lacking to us. Analogously, it is possible to have a general theory about the justification for God’s allowing human suffering in general without being able to understand why any given person suffered as he did. Theodicy is therefore not the project of proposing to explain God’s particular reasons for his dealings with any particular person or group of persons.13 Even still, the objections to the soul-making theodicy raised above are not about particular persons or groups. They are more general and cannot be ignored. In the next chapter I develop a theodicy that utilizes insights from the soul-making approach while attempting to address these lingering concerns.

For Further Reading Augustine. On the Free Choice of the Will. 1993. Translated by Thomas Williams. Indianapolis: Hackett. (The classic work by Augustine in which he argues for his free-will theodicy.) Davis, Stephen T., ed. 2001. Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. (Includes five different theodical approaches by the following leading thinkers: John K. Roth, John Hick, Stephen T. Davis, David Ray Griffin, and D. Z. Phillips.) Hick, John. 1996/2007. Evil and the God of Love. London: Palgrave Macmillan. (The classic soul-making theodicy is presented and defended.) Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. 1957. London: Fontana Books. (Lewis’s classic work on the problem of evil.) Meister, Chad and James K. Dew, Jr., eds. 2017. God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic. (Includes five different theodical approaches by the following leading thinkers: Phillip Cary, William Lane Craig, William Hasker, Thomas Jay Oord, and Stephen Wykstra.) Swinburne, Richard. 1998. Providence and the Problem of Evil. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (A recent and powerful defense of the free-will theodicy.) Walls, Jerry L. 1992. Hell: The Logic of Damnation. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. (Walls utilizes the tools of a skilled analytic philosopher to argue that some traditional views of hell are still defensible today.)

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4 A Global Theodicy of Fulfillment I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me to be too much misery in the world. —CHARLES DARWIN1

If I light an electric torch at night out of doors I don’t judge its power by looking at the bulb, but by seeing how many objects it lights up. The brightness of a source of light is appreciated by the illumination it projects upon non-luminous objects. The value of a religious way of life is appreciated by the amount of illumination thrown upon the things of this world. —SIMONE WEIL2

The two theodicies presented in the previous chapter are in agreement about the central role of free will in the emergence and propagation of evil and the advancement of goods in human history. But they disagree about how the world has unfolded, particularly with respect to human moral development. According to the Augustinian theodicy, human beings were made morally perfect and then quickly fell into

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sin. According to the soul-making theodicy, human beings emerged from lower life forms through eons of biological and moral evolution.3 As already noted, the soul-making approach is more consonant with the consensus of contemporary science than the Augustinian one. However, including change and advance as a critical aspect of the way God made the world impugns the notion of a good creation, and it appears to make God the author of large amounts of evil in the world. If God established certain parameters of physics and biology in such a way that from inanimate matter living conscious organisms would evolve and mature, then it is God who is responsible for the struggle, suffering, and death, all of which are at the very heart of the evolutionary processes. In other words, if something like Darwinian evolution is true, then God appears to be the creator of a form of natural evil that is at the very heart of life in our world. It is a disconcerting (and quite anthropocentric) claim that the countless living organisms that have suffered and died throughout earth’s history were mere evolutionary expedients brought about by God for purposes of human moral and spiritual development. If something like the soulmaking theodicy is to succeed, it needs further development in order to answer this rather serious objection. That is the goal of this chapter: to be an addendum, as it were, to the soul-making approach. ~ Darwinian evolution might be mistaken in some significant way,4 but let’s take for granted that something akin to an evolutionary account of the development of flora and fauna is basically on target. Biological evolution as understood in contemporary science is the theory of the change of organic species over time. Its central elements include natural selection, mutation, and genetic drift. Currently, there is widespread disagreement among biologists regarding what, precisely, natural selection entails. In essence, though, it is the process in which organisms that have certain genetic characteristics (ones

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that make them better adjusted to an environment) tend to survive and reproduce, and are therefore better able to perpetuate these characteristics to succeeding generations. Those organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive; those less adapted tend not to survive. Mutations, the second element, are changes in the DNA sequence of a cell’s genome that are caused by such factors as radiation, viruses, and errors in DNA replication. These mutations may be harmful to an organism, or they may be beneficial, or they may have no effect at all. The third element, genetic drift, is a change in the gene pool of a small population, which occurs by chance. This can result in certain genetic characteristics being lost completely from the gene pool, and, unlike natural selection, this drifting has nothing to do with the survivability of the organism or population. In nature, then, law and chance are both powerful forces that together bring about the emergence and self-unfolding of ever higher levels of organization that have culminated in sentient, conscious life. These biological processes are formative in the unfolding of all living organisms on our planet. Given the essential role of these processes in world history, the following question arises: Is there a plausible justification for God’s creating a world that includes the effort, opposition, aggression, pain, suffering, and even death that are characteristics of this world? It has been argued by a number of philosophers and others that the world we live in makes more sense given the perspective of naturalism (that natural entities have only natural causes and that no supernatural entities, such as God, exist) than theism. Paul Draper, for example, whom we met in Chapter 2, makes such a case. His argument centers on the evolutionary struggle for survival and begins with the following statement: For a variety of biological and ecological reasons, organisms compete for survival, with some having an advantage in the

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struggle for survival over others; as a result, many organisms, including many sentient beings, never flourish because they die before maturity, many others barely survive, but languish for most or all of their lives, and those that reach maturity and flourish for much of their lives usually languish in old age; in the case of human beings and some nonhuman animals as well, languishing often involves intense or prolonged suffering.5 He then argues that since we know this claim is true, and that this claim is many times more likely given the central concepts of naturalism than of theism, if other evidences are equal, we have strong evidence for naturalism—much more so than for theism. Evolutionist Richard Dawkins also speaks to the issue when he says that the world looks exactly as it would if there is “at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”6 There is no doubt that the pain, suffering, and death experienced by sentient creatures because of evolution seem at first blush to reflect anything but the grand design of a perfectly good and omniscient creator. Could it be, however, that such processes are intrinsic to or even necessary for bringing about the kinds of beauty, diversity, richness, consciousness, and moral awareness manifest in our particular world? Is it possible that such dimensions of reality, as they exist in our world, could not have come to be without such processes? Maybe so. In fact, if theism is true, and if the world has indeed evolved through something akin to Darwinian principles as noted above, then it may well be that such processes, or something very much like them, are crucial and perhaps even necessary vehicles for the complexity, beauty, freedom, and morality that we experience. In any case, a theodicy that embraces the scientific consensus should take into account these processes and the apparently gratuitous “evils” intrinsic to biological evolution.

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In what follows, I will sketch a theodicy that not only includes the main elements of free-will and soul-making theodicies but also emphasizes certain constraints on the divine and a redemptive component—both of which, I believe, are requisites for a morally satisfactory account of the workings of God in the natural world.7 Here is the core of what we could call a theodicy of fulfillment: ●●

God is perfect in goodness, knowledge, and power, and yet there are constraints on divine action—metaphysical and moral—that limit God’s responses to evil.

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God brought forth a world that manifests many kinds of goods and values, including human persons with moral capacities and dispositions.

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Free choices that have real moral consequences are an essential element of moral and spiritual development and maturity for creatures such as ourselves, and God desires that we experience this development and maturity.

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For free choices with real moral consequences to be possible, a challenging environment is necessary—one in which pain and suffering are present and one that produces in morally conscious agents opposing dispositions and desires requisite for moral decision-making.

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Pain and suffering are not mere evolutionary expedients for the moral and spiritual development of human beings; for the world to be truly good, every sentient creature must have the opportunity to experience its own individual fulfillment, if not in this life then certainly in the afterlife.

Let’s unpack each of these points.

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First, God is perfect in goodness, knowledge, and power, and yet there are constraints on divine action, metaphysical and moral constraints, that limit God’s responses to evil.8 By the term “metaphysical” here, I refer to the underlying nature of things. This point is rather crucial to the theodicy, and it is also rather complex. So it will take some additional effort and space to attempt to make it clear. One metaphysical constraint, I will argue, is rooted in Godself as creatively expressed in our particular universe. Rather than seeing the world as radically external to God, where the actions of God would be “outside” interventions into its order and functioning, according to the view of God proposed here, the regularities of the world are understood to be in some sense a manifestation of the actions of God. What I mean is this: the God of classical theism is not an external agent akin to Zeus in the Greek pantheon who is something like a grand human being with supernatural powers who tinkers with or manipulates the world as something external to him. The God of classical theism is in the world, but the world is also in God in some important sense. We find “in” language in the Bible. In the book of the Acts of the Apostles, the relevant lines state this: “For ‘In him [God] we live and move and have our being’” (17:28). One way of construing the “in” is that within the divine, the laws and operations of the natural world are expressive of divine being, agency, will, and purpose. The “natural” regularities of the world are thus, in a sense, inner divine regularities. Tinkering with these regularities willy-nilly on this account could have negative effects, so God is to some extent constrained by them. The autonomic system of the human body, which regulates bodily functions in a largely unconscious manner, provides an (imperfect) analogy. On this account, the regularities of the natural world are an ongoing aspect within the created order where we

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see God’s (nonfocal) actions in the natural processes themselves. In the words of Arthur Peacocke, “the inorganic, biological, and human worlds are not just the stage of God’s action—they are in themselves a mode of God in action.”9 This would suggest that there is no real ontological difference between the regularities of the laws of nature and the intentionality of specific divine actions. On a theological read, then, natural laws will be seen as reports of regular and predictable patterns of divine activity, and not haphazard, unpredictable occurrences. But these regularities also entail constraints on divine action, for intentionally manipulating the regularities for the purpose of performing specific actions could cause unwanted secondary effects.10 Consider as an analogy a person choosing to breathe excessively. Human beings generally breathe naturally in a way that is healthy and safe. But if we chose to begin breathing in an excessive manner, perhaps to make a point about our control over our own autonomic bodily processes, this would be damaging to our bodies. Such breathing creates a low level of carbon dioxide in one’s blood, leading to narrowing of the blood vessels that supply blood to the brain. This reduction in blood supply to the brain can lead to symptoms like lightheadedness, tingling in the fingers, and even loss of consciousness. Analogously, it could be argued, in the case of God’s intentionally interfering with the regularities and natural processes of the world, that too could have negative and unwanted side effects. While we may not be able to predict what those effects would be for any given intervention, it seems a reasonable hypothesis that there could be such effects. Another type of divine constraint has to do with the creative independence that humans have—free will, as already discussed at length. While for classical theism all of reality is dependent upon God for its being and becoming, including the natural regularities just

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noted, entities that develop through the operation of those regularities may participate in an autonomy that has been prescribed by the divine will. This autonomy might even contravene and frustrate the divine will. Cases of moral evil, for example, are not directly willed by God, though their possibility is so willed. If God is to permit and promote the existence and flourishing of free and autonomous creatures, then cases of moral evil will be natural concomitants. Relatedly, another sort of constraint is rooted in the overall purposes God has for this universe. Such purposes may not be easily discernable, though it can be argued that one purpose of God’s creating this universe was to bring about rational agents who could enter into filial relationship with God (we will examine the point more closely in the next chapter). This purpose will also impose various constraints on God’s actions that follow from it. For example, if one of God’s purposes for creating this universe was to bring about the existence of a community of free and autonomous creatures who could develop into morally and spiritually mature beings who love others unconditionally and become united to the divine reality, then it may be the case that at least some of those creatures necessarily experience a certain amount of suffering. In that case, God could not bring about his chosen ends without such persons experiencing suffering. There may be other universes in which God’s nature is expressed in different ways, and they may well have different purposes than ours. But whatever the universe, given the parameters and possibilities of that universe and the nature of the divine reality as manifest in that universe, there will be certain limitations on divine action which are rooted in that particular expression and the purposes therein. While only God could fully know the parameters, purposes, and possibilities of any given universe, and we cannot always infer from these general constraints what specific constraints might apply in any particular situation, I think we can say at least this much about

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the metaphysical constraints of divine action with respect to our universe. What all of this entails is that there are certain limitations or constraints that prevent God from reducing or eliminating evil in every case. To put it concisely, even though God may want to eliminate evil in our world, that simply is not currently a live option.11 Let’s move on to the second major point of this theodicy of fulfillment—namely, that God brought forth a world that manifests many kinds of goods and values, including human persons with moral capacities and dispositions. Goodness is more fundamental than evil, for it is rooted in the reality of the transcendent. God is good, and the world God crafted is also good. It has intrinsic value. But the world was brought about from inchoate form. Our universe emerged as a singularity roughly thirteen billion years ago in an immensely hot and dense state. It then expanded (the “Big Bang”) and began cooling and forming galaxies. Over eons of time clouds of stellar dust congealed into stars and planets. At least one of those planets (and according to NASA, likely many others as well) fell into planetary habitability where the conditions were just right for carbon-based life to exist and flourish. Through a variety of events and processes, life on this planet emerged and developed. This world has been, then, since its origin, intrinsically good and filled with value (even given the struggles in nature). Jean-Paul Sartre maintained, “Value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.” He adds, “One may choose anything so long as it is done from the ground of freedom.”12 This does not seem to be true. I agree with Louis Pojman who writes: We do not choose most of our values in the same way we choose between two different majors or whether to have soup or salad with our meal. We cannot help valuing pleasure, health, happiness, and love and disvaluing pain and suffering. With regard to fundamental values, they choose us, not we them. . . . It is as though God or

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evolution preprogrammed us to desire these basic goods. And, when we find someone who does not value (or claims not to value) happiness, freedom, or love, we tend to explain this anomaly as a product of unfortunate circumstances.13 Furthermore, goodness and value, as generally understood, encompass all moral perfection, including benevolence—willing the good of another. The supreme reality, as understood in most of the world religions, wills the good of all creation. One way this is reflected in the sacred texts of the religious traditions can be found in the Golden Rule. Consider its variations: ●●

Confucianism: “Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” —The Analects of Confucius 15.23

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Hinduism: “One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself. This is the essence of morality. All other activities are due to selfish desire.” —The Hindu Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva XIII 113.8

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Buddhism: “He who for the sake of happiness hurts others, who also wants happiness, shall not hereafter find happiness. He who for the sake of happiness does not hurt others, who also want happiness, shall hereafter find happiness.” —The Dhammapada 131

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Judaism: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah; all the rest of it is commentary; go and learn.” —Talmud, Shabbat 31a

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Christianity: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” —Luke 6:31

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Islam: “No man is a true believer unless he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.” —Muhammad, from the Hadith, Muslim imam, 71–72

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If the supreme reality desires the good of all creation, including all moral creatures, then it would not be surprising if such creatures are capable of advancing in moral qualities, such as selfless love and compassion, to perfection. This leads to the third point of the theodicy of fulfillment, which is that for moral development to occur, moral agents must have the ability to make choices, and these choices must have real moral consequences. Arguably, for there to be this kind of choice, it must be free, and free in a robust sense. In other words, it must be the kind of freedom that is incompatible with determinism. This type of free will, referred to as libertarian freedom, involves individual control over one’s choices and actions. For libertarian freedom, a person exercises her own causal powers when acting freely so that when a free choice is made, what determines that choice is the person’s own act of will. For example, when I type on the keypad that is before me, I am choosing which words to put on this page. All things being the same, I could have chosen other words (for this reason or that), or I could have chosen not to write at all.14 This sort of free will may seem to contradict the omnipotence of God, for human free choices are not caused by God; they are caused by human persons, and sometimes they even go against the will of God. This power of choice doesn’t actually contradict divine power, however, if by divine power we mean something like maximal power. For even if God has maximal power, it does not follow that God has the ability to do anything conceivable. There are many things that God cannot do. God cannot make it the case that 2 + 2 = 5, nor can God create a square circle. So, too, it may well be that God cannot create a world of perfectly mature, moral human persons without those persons making moral decisions and developing and maturing through experiencing the ramifications of those decisions. For just as it makes no sense to believe that God can make square circles (the very

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notion of a square circle is incoherent, so there is no such thing as a square circle for God to create), so too, arguably, it makes no sense to believe that God could create by divine fiat morally mature, perfect persons who do only what is right and good. Moral maturity, it can be argued, requires that moral agents be involved in the formation of their character through the arduous process of moral decision-making. This view was not assumed in much of the older discussions about problems raised by evil. As John Hick points out, for example, in Part XI of David Hume’s book, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, it is assumed that God would desire a pain-free environment for human beings, and thus our world provides evidence against such a God. Hick replies to this charge: But such an assumption overlooks the fact that a world in which there can be no pain or suffering would also be one without moral choices and hence no possibility of moral growth and development. For in a situation in which no one can ever suffer injury or be liable to pain or suffering, no distinction would exist between right and wrong action. No action would be morally wrong, because no action could ever have harmful consequences; likewise, no action would be morally right in contrast to wrong. Whatever the values of such a world, its structure would not serve the purpose of allowing its inhabitants to develop from self-regarding animality to self-giving love.15 This leads to the fourth point of this theodicy of fulfillment. To make free choices of the type that have real moral merit, a proper environment is necessary. Moral decision-making occurs within particular contexts, and it seems that a proper context for real moral choice is one that includes opposing desires or dispositions within the individual making the choice. Consider this example. Suppose you have some extra cash on hand and are confronted with the decision

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of whether to (a) send money to a starving child in a poverty-stricken land (a friend, say, brought the situation to your attention) or (b) use the money to purchase a new unnecessary but really cool gadget to go along with your brand new laptop computer. If there were no competing desires within you, say one of selfish ambition and another of altruistic generosity (both of which are intrinsic features of biological evolution which have, arguably, emerged through conflict and struggle), what would the choice at hand consist in? It seems that with the felt qualities of the conflicting desires we experience, real choice makes more sense. So such internal conflicts are a necessary part of the very nature of moral development in an individual. In The Order of the Phoenix of the Harry Potter series, Sirius Black makes a relevant point: “The world isn’t split into good people and death eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside of us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.” And, I would add, who we truly become follows from those choices. So a life lived making moral decisions, deciding between opposing intrinsic or innate dispositions and desires, is an essential part of the transformation of one’s character into one that advances morally. If it is the case that competing desires and dispositions are requisite for moral decision-making (at least in its developmental phase), then something akin to aggression, disappointment, frustration, danger, and pain—all of which are essential features of biological development—are in fact necessary for real moral progress to occur. Perhaps, then, the natural evils we see in biological evolution are essential elements of an otherwise unattainable and very great good. Simply put, pain and suffering may be inevitable in our world. In some possible universes, including this one, it could well be that some suffering is inevitable. Modern science helps us to see this. If humans have evolved in our universe from a primeval big bang,

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then that process of evolution necessarily involves suffering and destruction. Stars had to explode to form the heavier elements of which life is composed. Millions of organisms had to die in order for human life to evolve on this planet. Even now, humans have to destroy plant or animal life in order to survive. The physical laws of this universe depend upon destruction, mutation, conflict, and, therefore, destruction and death, if intelligent persons are to evolve in it. If we understood the laws of nature fully, we would see that such destruction and the suffering conscious beings feel when involved in it are inevitable consequences of having a universe like this.16 The fifth and final point of this theodicy is that, even though God may have chosen to use evolution as the primary vehicle for the creation and maturation of living organisms, God would not bring about a world with creatures that experience evil for purposes of mere evolutionary expediency. The criticism of evolutionary expediency was noted in the previous chapter. It would be highly anthropocentric to affirm that the natural world, with its suffering, death, and predation, exists only for the development of human perfection. But I think it is a crucial element of a plausible theodicy to emphasize that all creatures are valuable, and all creatures, at least all sentient ones, should have the opportunity to experience eschatological fulfillment in a fully just world. This means that every creature would need to have the opportunity to experience its own flourishing, either in this life or in the next. If this were not the case, it seems that such suffering would be unjustified. Consider the rather long but potent words of John Stuart Mill: There are, indeed, those who flatter themselves with the notion of reading the purposes of the Creator in his works, but in consistency to have seen grounds for inferences from which they have shrunk.

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If there are any marks at all of special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals. They have been lavishly fitted out with the instruments necessary for that purpose; their strongest instincts impel them to it, and many of them seem to have been constructed incapable of supporting themselves by any other food. If a tenth part of the pains which have been expended in finding benevolent adaptations in all nature, had been employed in collecting evidence to blacken the character of the Creator, what scope for the comment would not have been found in the entire existence of the lower animals, divided, with scarcely an exception, into devourers and devoured, and a prey to a thousand ills from which they are denied the faculties necessary for protecting themselves! If we are not obliged to believe the animal creation to be the work of a demon, it is because we need not suppose it to have been made by a being of infinite power. But if imitation of the Creator’s will as revealed in nature, were applied as a rule of action in this case, the most atrocious enormities of the worst man would be more than justified by the apparent intention of Providence that throughout all animated nature the strong should prey upon the weak.17 Indeed, if every creature did not have the opportunity to experience its own flourishing, either in this life or in the next, then the mantle of judgment against the Creator would seem warranted. The importance of the eschatological fulfillment of all sentient creatures is itself not a new idea. Keith Ward offered the following insight decades ago: Theism would be falsified if physical death was the end, for then there could be no justification for the existence of this world. However, if one supposes that every sentient being has an endless existence, which offers the prospect of supreme happiness, it is

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surely true that the sorrows and troubles of this life will seem very small in comparison. Immortality, for animals as well as humans, is a necessary condition of any acceptable theodicy; that necessity, together with all the other arguments for God, is one of the main reasons for believing in immortality.18 But the idea did not begin with Professor Ward. Long before him, John Wesley shared a similar sentiment in responding to the claim that there might be an objection made against God for the suffering of so many animals: “But the objection vanishes away if we consider that something better remains after death for these creatures also; that these likewise shall one day be delivered from this bondage of corruption, and shall then receive an ample amends for all their present sufferings.”19 And long before Wesley, the biblical author of the book of Colossians intimated such fulfillment: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him [Christ], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (NRSV, chapter 1, verses 19–20; italics added). But the idea didn’t originate with the New Testament, either. We find the Hebrew prophet in the Old Testament book of Isaiah poetically reflecting on a future time when suffering and predation will be no more, and humans and animals will experience life redeemed: The wolf will live with the lamb, The leopard will lie down with the goat, The calf and the lion and the yearling together; A little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, Their young will lie down together, And the lion will eat straw like an ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,

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And the young child will put his hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy On all my holy mountain, For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, As the waters cover the sea. (Isa. 11:6–9) In his reply to Hick’s soul-making theodicy, D. Z. Phillips raises an objection to the eschatological aspect of it: “Hick’s answer to evils, however horrendous, is to say that we should trust that everything will work out for the best after death. What ‘the ultimate end’ is baffles our imagination.”20 Remember that for Hick, human beings will continue on in an afterlife where their moral development will continue until it is perfected. Hick does not go into much detail about the heavenly state in his presentation that Phillips is responding to, so Phillips offers this critique: Perhaps such details are thought to be unimportant. “We’ll survive,” it may be said, “but we don’t know how.” This recourse to ignorance hides a conceptual bankruptcy. In Becket’s Waiting for Godot, one of the tramps, to relieve their boredom, says to the other, “Suppose we repented?” The other asks, “Repented what?” The first replies: “Oh . . . we wouldn’t have to go into the details.” But I’m afraid we do: details about “myth,” “progress,” “human life,” and “survival after death.” Details are not a matter of abstract logic, but a concern for the sense in our words, in our hopes and aspirations, in our fears and disappointments, and in the very lives we lead.21 Hick’s response is to suggest some form of rebirth akin to what Hindus and Buddhists maintain. There are challenges with this view, as we will see in Chapter 8. Nevertheless, it seems that whatever such an eschatological future entails, if God exists as the supreme reality of unsurpassable value, as depicted by some of the greatest minds of the

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world faiths, it makes sense that the world will be set to rights—including there being the opportunity for the restoration of all sentient beings. This could well be accomplished by bringing them into a flourishing state in a life beyond death where they will receive what was unavailable to them in this life—fulfillment of their natures. Envisioning such a paradisal future may be beyond human comprehension. Shakespeare was probably right: “There are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Hamlet, scene v). Why not? If a reality of supreme value and goodness does exist, isn’t it reasonable to expect a comprehensive and auspicious eschatology—one that far surpasses human imagination in goodness, beauty, and grandeur?

Concluding Reflections What I have set out to do in the last chapter and this one is first to demonstrate how theists (broadly construed) have attempted to justify the goodness of God, given the reality of evil. We examined two classical theodicies: free will and soul-making. Each of them includes elements essential for making sense of evil in the world, but neither of them sufficiently addresses a fundamental type of natural evil: the pain, suffering, and death intrinsic to biological advancement. Building on the notions of free will and character-making offered in these classical theodicies, the skeleton of a theodicy of fulfillment was put forth utilizing five basic principles. If one begins with the presumption of atheism, then some of these principles will doubtless seem preposterous. But if one begins with the presumption of a supreme reality of unsurpassable value, and one grants the consensus on cosmic and biological evolution, then it seems that something like them may well be true. For the theist the options are limited. It simply cannot be that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent in the old-fashioned

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senses of those terms. Something has to give, for, as the argument goes, an omnibenevolent God would desire to eliminate evil, an omniscient God would know how to eliminate evil, and an omnipotent God would be able to eliminate evil. But evil is not eliminated. The theodicy of fulfillment sketched above is an attempt to show what must give. This is not to say, of course, that such an account removes the agony or horror of any particular evil or set of evils experienced by human beings or nonhuman animals. Nor does it mean that every particular case of evil is redeemable or will make sense. This theodicy, as presented here, is a global one in that it conceives of God as the transcendent reality of perfect goodness and supreme value. Such a view of the divine is not limited to any particular religious tradition. We find it in the writings of such thinkers as Shankara and Ramanuja (Hindus), Maimonides (a Jew), Anselm and Aquinas (Christians), and Al Ghazali (a Muslim), to name a few.22 Each of these traditions, as well as others, could adopt this theodicy without modifying the idea of God as conceived by some of the greatest thinkers in their own traditions. This theodicy is also a limited one. It does not claim to solve the problem of evil. But it does set the occasions of evil in a context in which we can perhaps begin to make sense of our complex world. Yes, there is evil in the world. And yes, if a reality of supreme value and goodness exists that crafted the world, then that reality is responsible in some significant sense for the goings on of the cosmos. It makes sense to affirm that free will accounts for much of the evil in our world, but certainly not all of it. Certain forms of evil, including the natural evil we find in the processes of biological evolution, could well be necessary components of an unfolding world in which finite physical creatures, including moral agents, exist. Some evils may well be gratuitous; they may have no explicit purpose whatsoever. Nevertheless, if such a supreme reality does exist, in the eschaton reparations will

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undoubtedly be made available for all the suffering that sentient creatures have experienced. A world of pain, suffering, and death will have been worth it as those in the new creation experience the eternal goodness and bliss that is the desired fulfillment of all sentient beings. So we have the basic scaffolding of a theodicy for our day— one that attempts to be congruent with modern science, religious pluralism, and recent philosophical debates. Yet while this theodicy does take into consideration both moral and natural evil, it doesn’t address every type of problem related to evil. In fact, there is a glaring issue that must yet be addressed before examining the difficulties nontheistic views of the world face, given the reality of evil. We will tackle that problem in the next chapter.

For Further Reading Betenson, Toby. 2016. “Anti-Theodicy” Philosophy Compass 11/1, 56–65. (A helpful presentation on the current state of the anti-theodicy discussion.) Burrell, David B. 2008. Deconstructing Theodicy: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press. (Burrell argues that rather than offering a theodicy—a futile undertaking, in his judgment—the book of Job deconstructs theodicy and presents Job as seeking to speak to God instead.) Phillips, D. Z. 2005. The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. (Phillips argues that the problem of evil is connected with our conception of God, and that the latter is problematic.) Pinnock, Sarah Katherine. 2002. Beyond Theodicy: Jewish and Christian Continental Thinkers Respond to the Holocaust. Albany: State University of New York Press. (A careful analysis of various attempts at theodicy.) Roth, K. John. 2001. “A Theodicy of Protest.” In Stephen T. Davis (ed.), Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, A New Edition, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. (Roth is the leading defender of a theodicy of protest, and this essay is a clear presentation of it.) Trakakis, N. N. 2017. “Anti-Theodicy” in Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser, The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 124–43. (An up-to-date articulation of anti-theodicy by one of its best thinkers.)

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5 Anti-Theodicy, Misotheism, and Theodicy of Protest He is almighty, isn’t He? He could use His might to save the victims, but He doesn’t! So—on whose side is He? Could the killer kill without His blessing—without His complicity? —ELIE WIESEL, THE TRIAL OF GOD

In the last two chapters we examined several theodicies. Each of them entailed an assumption: traditional formulations of the problem of evil are legitimately construed, and justification of God given the problems raised by evil is possible. But not all theists agree that the traditional formulations of the problem of evil are warranted. And some theists are not satisfied with any of the traditional theodicies or even with the general theodical approach. In this chapter and the next, we explore responses by theists (and nontheists) who demonstrate some form of this reaction to theodicy. In this chapter, anti-theodicy, misotheism, and theodicy of protest will be the focus; in the next chapter a view called skeptical theism will be examined.

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Misotheism and Theodicy of Protest As was noted in an earlier chapter, theodicy is a term traditionally used for an argument that attempts to demonstrate that God (who is perfectly good, knowledgeable, and powerful) is wholly just despite the reality of evil in a world that he created. But there are some who use the term “theodicy” whose theodical position does not fall within this definition. So let us expand the connotation of the term “theodicy” to mean any response to evil from the perspective of theism broadly construed.1 What may be surprising to some is that there are theists who do not believe that God is perfectly good. The Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, for example, writes in a manner that can be interpreted as a theodicy of protest—a protest against the “goodness” of God. In his book The Brothers Karamazov, the intellectual and bookish Ivan Karamazov discusses the problem of suffering with his brother, the novice priest Alyosha. Ivan offers a number of examples of atrocities against children, including soldiers shooting babies for sport while their parents are forced to watch, and a boy torn to bits by hounds for accidentally harming one of them. Ivan then says the following: “And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of suffering which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth was not worth such a price.”2 Dostoyevsky presses the point with regard to suffering children: Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. . . . Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming!

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I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: “Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.” When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, “Thou art just, O Lord!” then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. . . . You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child’s torturer, “Thou art just, O Lord!” but I don’t want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to “dear, kind God”! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for.3 While The Brothers Karamazov is a fictional account, Dostoyevsky’s outrage toward God shouts from many of its pages. He is not alone in his acrimony toward the divine because of suffering. Indeed, there are those who are openly hateful toward God. These misotheists (from the Greek terms misos, which means hatred, and theos, which means God) do not necessarily deny that God exists. Their hatred is not merely with the idea of God. For many of them, they really do believe that God is real. But the God they envision is not beneficent. God is less than wholly good; he is perhaps even evil. Indeed, for some misotheists, God is the devil. One clear case of a misotheist/dystheist is Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909). Many of the discourses of his enmity with God are published with unadulterated candor. His most crystalline

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case of misotheism is offered in a poem that is rarely printed, titled “Hymn of Man” (1871). As Bernard Schweizer notes, it is an “elaborate parody of devotional poetry” that “goes to the very heart of misotheism by treating God as a criminal who is judged and condemned by a jury of men.”4 The poem reads: By the dread wherewith life was astounded and shamed out of sense of its trust, By the scourges of doubt of repentance that fell on the soul at thy nod, Thou art judged, O judge, and the sentence is gone forth against thee, O God. Thy slave that slept is awake; thy slave but slept for a span; Yea, man thy slave shall unmake thee, who made thee lord over man.5 Another misotheist is Elie Wiesel (1928–2016), the Auschwitz survivor mentioned in Chapter 1, who became an eloquent witness for the millions of Jews slaughtered during the Holocaust. At the age of 16 Wiesel was liberated from Buchenwald, having experienced the worst kind of horrific evil, including the murder of his mother and sister. Years later, he would write about his harrowing experiences and speak out against the violence leveled against so many in the German concentration camps. It was undoubtedly this speaking out, when there were so few voices doing so, that led the Nobel committee to award him the Peace Prize in 1986. It was on the eve of Rosh Hashanah in 1944, after months of experiencing the cruelty and inhumanity concocted by the Nazi “Protective Echelon,” called the Schutzstaffel or SS, that Wiesel’s faith in God finally collapsed. It happened immediately following the recital of the central Jewish blessing that was offered in the concentration camp where he was being held: “Praised are you, Lord our God, King

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of the universe, who has chosen us out of all the nations and bestowed upon us his Torah.” It was at that moment of hearing those words recited that he made the decision to question—nay challenge—the divine. He expresses his thoughts and resolve upon hearing them: Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because he had had thousands of children burned in His pits? Because He kept six crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days? Because in His great might He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death? How could I say to Him: “Blessed art Thou, Eternal Master of the Universe, Who chose us from among the races to be tortured day and night.”6 Wiesel fully admitted that he had an attitude of anger and rebellion toward God. He writes that “all my writing was born out of anger. In order to contain it, I had to write.”7 In an interview, Wiesel conceded who his battle was really with: “Although I will never defeat God, I still fight Him.”8 John K. Roth, a Protestant professor of philosophy whose thinking has been largely shaped by the Jewish response to the Holocaust, including that of Wiesel, has crafted what may well be the best-known protest theodicy in print. A protest theodicy is not an attempt to justify God-given evil. Rather, it is a protest against the God who created our world filled, as it is, with all manner of evil, pain, and suffering. For Roth, given the sovereignty and omnipotence of God (which he affirms), God should be able to do something about the pain and suffering in the world. But alas, since nothing is being done about it, we must draw the conclusion that God is not interested in dealing with it. Indeed, God is culpable for the evil and suffering that persists since he is unresponsive to it. Our task, then, as believers in God, is not to defend him. It is to express our grievances against God; it is to pound our fist in protest against the Almighty.

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Roth describes, or perhaps defines, evil as waste: What does evil mean? That question itself is a crucial element in the problem of evil. . . . In fact, evil is activity, sometimes inactivity, and thus is a manifestation of power. Displays of evil power are displays that waste. That is, evil happens whenever power ruins or squanders, or whenever it fails to forestall those results.9 This ruining or squandering, including especially those acts that “waste human life,” cannot be covered over with a moral veneer (even a divine one) on Roth’s view. He quotes Hegel that history is “the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of people, the wisdom of states, and the virtue of individuals have been sacrificed.”10 And he means “sacrificed,” for “too much has been lost.”11 He protests those theodicies that consider the death and destruction of individuals and species, either through free choice or through evolutionary means, as necessary features of the advancement of life in our world, rather than as waste. What about a theodical approach that grants limitations on divine action now but yet offers hope—a theodicy of fulfillment whereby God will in the eschaton make things right with the world? For one, Roth believes a God who is not in fact omnipotent is ineffectual and unworthy of worship. Roth denies that God is less than omnipotent, however, for such a view of God is not supported by the many cases in the biblical record in which he is able to change the course of history through miracle, such as parting the sea, stopping the sun, and raising the dead. So if God is all-powerful, why could he not prevent the Holocaust? Why could he not prevent the most horrific evils? Furthermore, he says, limitations on God’s power may have made sense “if the pieces were not so many and so bloody.” He continues: Such a [limited] God may indeed be excused, not least because such a God is hardly worth bothering about. This God is simply

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too ineffectual to forestall waste decisively, unless of course one holds that God has some heretofore unwitnessed potential for eschatological power. On what ground, however, could such a claim be based? Most versions of Christian and Jewish faith would locate that ground in historical events: the exodus or the resurrection, for example. But to speak of a God who leads people out of bondage or who raises persons from death is surely not to speak of a God who, by history’s ongoing testimony, is always doing the best God can. God’s saving acts in the world are too few and far between.12 What our world demonstrates, for Roth, is that God chose to allow history to unfold in an exceedingly wasteful manner, and “that such a wasteful God cannot be totally benevolent. History itself,” he says, “is God’s indictment.”13 For Roth and other adherents of a theodicy of protest, given all of this we should give up the hope that there will be a future situation that will justify all of the wasted life. No greater good will bring about an end that fully justifies such means. A protest theodicy will not allow one to forget the futile cries of the children, women, and men of the Holocaust or of any genocide or horror. In the end, “No matter what happens,” says Roth, “God is going to be much less than perfectly justified.”14 God is on trial here, and we should proclaim our grievances and protest God’s apparent lack of concern. Roth views his protest theodicy as a type of anti-theodicy. In the next section we will sketch the contours of anti-theodicy before offering some responses to it and to theodicies of protest more specifically.

Anti-Theodicy Anti-theodicy is not a uniform approach to the problem of evil. However, as the term is generally used in the literature, anti-theodicy

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approaches tend to reject both traditional formulations of the problem of evil and of theodical responses to them. As the name itself indicates, all anti-theodicies reject the attempt to justify God, given the evil in the world (i.e., they reject theodicy). There are various kinds of criticisms of theodicy, as we have already seen in previous chapters. With many of them, the theodicist may respond by tweaking the theodicy, attempting to remedy it in this way or that. One could emend the soul-making theodicy, for example, by including a strong emphasis on the eschatological fulfillment (as I have tried to do). The anti-theodicist, however, argues that the theodical approach is by nature defective, and that its deficiencies cannot be remedied by emending this or that aspect of it. Indeed, the term “anti-theodicy” was first brought into widespread use in Zachary Braiterman’s book, (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought, where he defined it as “any religious response to the problem of evil whose proponents refuse to justify, explain, or accept as somehow meaningful the relationship between God and suffering.”15 While he defines it as a specifically religious response, others have argued that it could also be utilized in a nonreligious or even an anti-theistic way, with the goal being to demonstrate that the problem of evil renders belief in God implausible or irrational.16 In any case, for the anti-theodicist, the very goal of theodicy as traditionally understood is spurious. As Nick Trakakis notes, The very project of theodicy, on this view, is a non-starter, and this is because theodicies invariably rest on a range of deeply problematic presuppositions, framework principles, and categories and styles of thought. The specific flaws may be moral, conceptual, metaphysical, or methodological in nature.17 Anti-theodicists do not generally attempt to solve the problem of evil as such, but neither do they attempt to enhance the problem.

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Rather, they work to dissolve the problem by rejecting it in one manner or another.18 As used in this book, a theodicy of protest is an anti-theodicy, but an anti-theodicy is not necessarily a theodicy of protest. A theodicy of protest is a subset of anti-theodicy, for the latter does not necessarily grant the classical attributes of God in its depiction of God, nor does it grant the problems of evil as traditionally crafted, nor does it necessarily provide a protest to the divine. But what they have in common is a rejection of theodicy as traditionally understood. And they both are not typically atheistic. There are a variety of objections to theodicy raised by antitheodicists, but the central one has to do with moral concerns. D. Z. Phillips, Nick Trakakis, Kenneth Surin, and others have crafted a host of moral objections to theodicy, many of them focusing on the point that theodicy does not take pain and suffering seriously, and others challenging the theodicist’s claim that God has morally sufficient reasons for allowing evils to exist. I provide here only a sample of such objections.19 One type of moral challenge to theodicy is that it utilizes a faulty moral theory, a form of moral instrumentalism or utilitarianism in which God permits evils for instrumental or greater good purposes, and that such an approach is problematic on several counts. Consider Hick’s soul-making theodicy discussed in a previous chapter. Central to the approach is that God permits evils in order to allow human beings the opportunity to grow in character and virtue. This requires our existing in hostile environments. But, as Phillips argues, such an approach is problematic because it involves the objectionable instrumentalism in which the sufferings of others are treated as an opportunity for me to be shown at my best. Ironically, if I think of their sufferings in this way, I am shown at my worst.20

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Furthermore, the instrumentalist view of evil utilized in those theodicies in which evil is permitted by God for the sake of some greater good can also be criticized on the grounds that it treats persons as means to some end instead of ends in themselves, thus vitiating their inherent worth and dignity.21 He notes in particular theodicies that emphasize more responsibility such that suffering can be good in that it prompts moral responsibility. But such thinking inverts our moral leanings and, he thinks, leads to silliness: The argument leads to a grotesque inversion of moral relations to the sufferings of others. Instead of our concern being directed towards the suffering, the suffering is said to have its point in the concern. It would have the Good Samaritan saying, “Thank you, God, for another opportunity for my moral development.”22 Relatedly, some theodicists argue that God allows the evils we suffer ourselves because they afford us the opportunity to grow in character through such sufferings. Phillips quotes theodicist Richard Swinburne on this: Without a significant amount of natural evil, we simply would not have the opportunity to show patience . . . on the heroic scale required for us to form heroically good characters. It is a great good for us to be able, through free choice over time, to form such characters.23 But this, too, is problematic, argues Phillips, for it ignores all of those examples where pain and suffering have not formed characters in positive ways but have instead been destructive. Phillips notes that critics of his critique of such theodicies grant that negative effects of evil can occur, but he argues that when they do their philosophizing (and theodicizing) they seem to forget them. “Some philosophers react with impatience to my examples, saying, ‘We know all about

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that.’ To which I reply, ‘In that case, why do you forget it all when you philosophize?’”24 One of the examples he offers is worth quoting. It is W. Somerset Maugham’s recollections of what he saw in hospital wards during his training for the medical profession: At that time (a time to most people of sufficient ease, when peace seemed certain and prosperity secure) there was a school of writers who enlarged upon the moral value of suffering. They claimed that it was salutary. They claimed that it increased sympathy and enhanced the sensibilities. They claimed that it opened to the spirit new avenues of beauty and enabled it to get into touch with the mystical kingdom of God. They claimed that it strengthened the character, purified it from its human grossness and brought to him who did not avoid but sough it a more perfect happiness. . . . I set down in my notebooks, not once or twice, but in a dozen places, the facts that I had seen. I knew that suffering did not ennoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, mean, petty, and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things. It did not make them more than men; it made them less than men; and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not buy our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.25 To sum up, Phillips is opposed to an instrumental approach to ethics, for “To rescue suffering from degradation by employing cost-benefit analysis, is like rescuing a prostitute from degradation by telling her to charge higher fees.”26 Other anti-theodicists are in agreement. I shall say something about this below. So far we have examined the negative approach taken by those engaged in anti-theodicy. But it is also the case that anti-theodicy provides constructive replies to the problem of evil. In fact, Nick Trakakis argues that its constructive dimension may be its most

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appealing feature.27 Consider, for example, the way a distinction is made by some theodicists between the intellectual problem of evil and the existential one (as I have done in Chapter 1). According to Trakakis, Theodicists tend to uphold a distinction of this sort, and they usually offer their work as a solution to the theoretical problem of evil only—the practical problem is regarded as the business of priests and healthcare workers. But if, as anti-theodicists suggest, such dichotomies are artificial and pernicious, reducing philosophy to a technical and disinterested exercise, rather than a holistic enterprise involving the whole person (body and mind, passion and intellect) and calling forth the resources and insights of the arts as well as the sciences, then not only a very different approach to the problem of evil than the well-worn theodical one may result, but more fundamentally an alternative way of thinking about and practicing philosophy itself will be made possible. Antitheodicy thus quickly leads down the path of metaphilosophy. This is an interesting point. Unfortunately, he ends it there. We might wonder what such paths look like, and where they may lead. In any case, his claim that “reducing philosophy to a technical and disinterested exercise, rather than a holistic enterprise involving the whole person (body and mind, passion and intellect) and calling forth the resources and insights of the arts as well as the sciences,” is an insightful and important one, and theodicists should take it seriously. Indeed, such an approach could benefit the practice of philosophy in all domains, not just the philosophy of religion, as some feminist philosophers and others have argued. Another insight made by Trakakis about the constructive dimension of anti-theodicy is that it opens up new vistas of thinking about ultimate reality and the divine, and reconsiderations in metaphilosophy and

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metaphysics.28 One consideration is the development of modernity and postmodernity and the ways they contrast with ancient and medieval constructions of reality and the role of the divine. If we lived in these earlier times, most likely the reality of pain and suffering would not lead one to question the existence of God. Theodicy, in fact, was not for the most part conceived of as an apology for the existence of a good, omniscient, omnipotent God. Instead, one might wonder what it is that God is trying to teach us through calamitous events and experiences. What can we learn about God and ourselves, the ancients and medievals would ask. The anti-theodicist suggests that perhaps our contemporary enculturated concepts are leading us to false ways of construing God, reality, evil, and theodicy. Such a suggestion raises some of the issues tackled by those who affirm skeptical theism, which we will explore in the next chapter.

Concluding Reflections Anti-theodicy and theodicy of protest raise questions that need to be raised; they challenge theists and theodicists in ways they need to be challenged. In terms of their formal argument structures, they are fairly recent approaches to the problem of evil. But their general intuitions have been around for a very long time. In fact, we can find such intuitions in some of the earliest religious writings.29 And, as far as I am concerned, it is high time that theists and theodicists take them seriously. I close this chapter with a few further reflections. First, as was just mentioned in the previous section, it is important to note that how one views theodicy may well have much to do with how one views the world. What is fundamental reality? Is there a transcendent

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ground and source of the good and of virtue, or is all that exists fundamentally matter and energy? One’s answers to these questions will play a central role in how one construes the nature of evil and the possibility of theodicy. Construed theistically, is the world conceived of as being a place where good can come from evil, where all pain and suffering will be redeemed? Or is it a place where some evils are gratuitous and that’s simply that—where the deleterious effects of events and experiences will forever be a blight on some human lives and on God? In either case, is there a place for protest against the divine? I tend to think there is such a place; that lament and protest are appropriate in a world such as ours. Yet I do not think theodicy is unwarranted. I stick with what was argued for in the previous chapter. But I do believe that one’s expectation for what theodicy might produce needs to be calibrated by the many evils there are. Theodicy cannot solve the problem of evil, but it can help make better sense of world in which there is a God. Nevertheless, the theodicist should be reminded of how reigned in her theodical matrix actually is. Marilyn McCord Adams rightly criticizes theodicists for reflection carried on at “too high a level of abstraction.”30 Those engaged in antitheodicy and theodicy of protest approaches to God and evil tend to keep the theodicist’s feet firmly planted on the ground. They remind us that theodicy may promise too much; it may even legitimate evil. If one is going to engage in theodicy, he or she needs to keep it real. Here the words of Irving Greenberg ring wise and true: “No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.”31 For misotheists, a central criticism of God is that when people need God the most (such as when they are suffering or dying), there is only silence. For many, God seems to be mute or absent, even (or perhaps especially) during the most challenging of times. What are

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we to make of this deus absconditus—this divine hiddenness? It is to this topic that we turn in the next chapter.

For Further Reading Betenson, Toby. 2016. “Anti-Theodicy” Philosophy Compass 11/1, 56–65. (A helpful presentation of the current state of the anti-theodicy discussion.) Burrell, David B. 2008. Deconstructing Theodicy: Why Job has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press. (Burrell argues that rather than offering a theodicy—a futile undertaking, in his judgment—the book of Job deconstructs theodicy and presents Job as seeking to speak to God instead.) Phillips, D. Z. 2005. The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. (Phillips argues that the problem of evil is connected with our conception of God, and that the latter is problematic.) Pinnock, Sarah Katherine. 2002. Beyond Theodicy: Jewish and Christian Continental Thinkers Respond to the Holocaust. Albany: State University of New York Press. (A careful analysis of various attempts at theodicy.) Roth, K. John. 2001. “A Theodicy of Protest.” In Stephen T. Davis (ed.), Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, A New Edition, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. (Roth is the leading defender of a theodicy of protest, and this essay is a clear presentation of it.) Trakakis, N. N. 2017. “Anti-Theodicy.” In Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 124–43. (An up-to-date articulation of antitheodicy by one of its best thinkers.)

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6 The Problem of Divine Hiddenness In previous chapters we examined defenses and theodicies as approaches to addressing the challenge of the concept of God, given the reality of evil. Even if there are responses to the problem of evil that deflect alleged rebuttals to the coherence of theism, most people would prefer that God’s existence be more evident. It is important to note, however, that not everyone has such a desire. The well-known atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel, for example, has made it clear that he does not want there to be a God: “It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope that there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”1 Yet most people, and certainly most theists, would prefer that if God is real he provide some sort of decisive confirmation of his reality and presence. This point that the existence of God is not very obvious creates a set of problems. One difficulty is dubbed “the problem of divine hiddenness.” The problem can be characterized in the following manner. God’s existence is not an obvious feature of the universe. God cannot be seen or heard or touched or experienced by any of the five senses. There is no conclusive evidence for the reality of God.

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But if God does exist, his existence should be an obvious feature of the universe. Theists, then, carry the burden of providing a reasonable account of why God’s existence is not readily apparent. To put it another way, why would God’s presence, if God does exist, not be obvious to any and every person, or least every reasonable person, seeking to know or experience God? Why would a loving, caring divine being remain hidden from the very creatures God created with the purported purpose of having such a relationship? The absence of a reasonable answer to such questions may even provide evidence that there is no divine reality. We could put the problem more concisely this way: Either God can’t make his presence known or won’t do so. If God can’t make his presence known, God must not be perfectly powerful. If God won’t make his presence known, God must not be perfectly good. But lacking either of these attributes means that God, if God exists, is nothing like the divine reality of historic theism. The other option, of course, is that such a God does not exist at all. Problems arising with respect to the apparent hiddenness of God have not only been raised by agnostics or atheists; indeed, theists often concede the difficulty as well. The Hebrew Bible, for example, is filled with language of God’s hiding: ●●

Why do you hide your face, and count me as your enemy? (Job 13:24)

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Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (Ps. 10:1)

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Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? (Ps. 44:23–24)

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Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior. (Isa. 45:15)

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The silence of God is another way of expressing the hiddenness of God. In Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence, a young Jesuit priest from Portugal named Sebastian Rodrigues is sent to Japan to comfort Christian converts and to investigate claims that his spiritual mentor has committed apostasy. Out of suspicion and concern about the rapid growth of the Christian faith in Japan, feudal lords, under the auspices of the shogun (chief military commander), attempt to drive Christianity out of Japan by brutally torturing Christians to the point that they either deny their faith or suffer fatal consequences. The novel’s plot focuses on a small group of Portuguese priests whose faith is challenged in ways that only the pain and suffering of persecution can achieve. Sebastian describes one particularly horrifying scenario in which a Japanese man named Kichijiro—an apostate who had witnessed the murder of his family before himself recanting— describes his problem with God: I do not believe that God has given us this trial to no purpose. I know that the day will come when we will clearly understand why this persecution with all its sufferings has been bestowed upon us—for everything that Our Lord does is for our good. And yet, even as I write these words I feel the oppressive weight in my heart of those last stammering words of Kichijiro on the morning of his departure: “Why has Deus Sama [God] imposed this suffering upon us?” And then the resentment in those eyes that turned upon me. “Father,” he had said, “what evil have we done?” I suppose I should simply cast from my mind these meaningless words of the coward; yet why does his plaintive voice pierce my breast with all the pain of a sharp needle? Why has Our Lord imposed this torture and this persecution on poor Japanese peasants? No, Kichijiro was trying to express something different,

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something even more sickening. The Silence of God. Already twenty years have passed since the persecution broke out; the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament of so many Christians; the red blood of priests has flowed profusely; the walls of the churches have fallen down; and in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent. This was the problem that lay behind the plaintive question of Kichijiro.2 While these words are fictional, Silence is a work of historical fiction—one based on the actual oral histories of several Japanese communities in the sixteenth century during which Christian men, women, and children were rounded up and required to recant or face some of the most gruesome persecutions imaginable. We are not surprised when certain entities that we do believe exist remain hidden from our sensory experiences. Quarks, gluons, and strings, for example, are unavailable to direct empirical observation, and yet most of us don’t consider their lack of visible detection to be problematic. The reason, of course, is that they are not the kinds of entities that should, if they do in fact exist, be readily available to such detection or experience. God, however, is such a reality. If God exists and is the unsurpassably loving, wise, caring, personal being described by the monotheistic religions, then it seems reasonable to suppose that God should be readily present to us. God should at least offer some sort of confirmation of his existence, especially when we are in doubt about it and could truly benefit from such knowledge.

An Argument for God’s Nonexistence Atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell was once asked what he would say to God if after his death he had a divine encounter and was asked by God why he hadn’t believed during his life. Russell’s reply: “Not

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enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!”3 We might wonder what kind of evidence Russell would have preferred. It seems reasonable enough that one form of evidence Russell could have benefitted from (as could the rest of us) is some sort of objective confirmation that God is really there. Perhaps even better would be a direct encounter with God as a loving, caring, personal reality, especially in times of doubt or distress. But so far as we know, Russell never received such confirming evidence and died an atheist. What are we to make of this problem of divine hiding? Philosopher John Schellenberg has argued that the hiddenness of God provides evidence that there is no such God. In the following narrative he lays out the problem, in the form of an analogy, with clarity and verve: Imagine yourself in the following situation. You’re a child playing hide-and-seek with your mother in the woods at the back of your house. You’ve been crouching for some time now behind a large oak tree, quite a fine hiding place but not undiscoverable— certainly not for someone as clever as your mother. However, she does not appear. The sun is setting, and it will soon be bedtime, but still no mother. Not only isn’t she finding you, but, more disconcerting, you can’t hear her anywhere: she’s not beating the nearby bushes, making those exaggerated “looking for you” noises, and talking to you meanwhile as mothers playing this game usually do. Now imagine that you start calling for your mother. Coming out from behind the tree, you yell out her name, over and over again. “Mooooommmmm!” But no answer. You look everywhere: through the woods, in the house, down the road. An hour passes, and you are growing hoarse from calling. Is she anywhere around? Would she fail to answer if she were around? Now let’s change the story a little. You’re a child with amnesia— apparently because of a blow to the head (which of course you

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don’t remember), your memory goes back only a few days—and you don’t even know whether you have a mother. You see other children with their mothers and think it would sure be nice to have one. So you ask everyone you meet and look everywhere you can, but without forwarding your goal in the slightest. You take up the search anew each day, looking diligently, even though the strangers who took you in assure you that your mother must be dead. But to no avail. Is this what we should expect if you really have a mother and she is around, and aware of your search? When in the middle of the night you tentatively call out—“Mooooommmmm!”— would she not answer if she were really within earshot?4 Certainly, Schellenberg argues, if the mother in these scenarios was really around and simply didn’t care to respond to her child, she would not be a good mother. A good parent isn’t like that. Good parents do what they can to comfort their children, to be present to them, especially in times of need and distress. They hold them, talk to them, and use various means of communicating their love, care, and concern. But when it comes to God and human beings, it seems that God (if God exists) is acting more like this absent, uncaring mother than like a good, loving parent. No doubt there are times when good parents are absent from their children. There may be times when it’s appropriate, say, for parents to go out for the evening for an intimate dinner date together—something healthy and beneficial for a flourishing relationship. But we know the difference between appropriate times of absence and inappropriate ones. In fact, most countries have laws that recognize the difference and punish parents who are too absent from their children, calling this “child neglect.” There also may be times when good parents need to shut themselves away from a child—to be intentionally absent and even silent. For example, when a toddler disobeys his parents, they may put him in a

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“time-out” in a separate room, away from everyone else, and tell him to be quiet for a time and not to speak to anyone. Despite a child’s ranting tantrum, good parents may take some time and not respond at all. This can be a form of discipline and moral education. But again, we generally know the difference between appropriate times of absence and silence on the one hand and relational neglect on the other. If you love someone, you communicate with them; you spend time with them. God seems to do neither with human beings. Using these intuitions and the traditional theistic understanding of God, Schellenberg develops several versions of the hiddenness argument for God’s nonexistence. Perhaps the most persuasive of them focuses on reasonable nonbelief. If God does exist, then reasonable nonbelief would not occur, for surely a perfectly loving God would desire that people believe in God. And if God desires that people so believe, God would work it out so that persons would be in a position to believe. However, reasonable nonbelief does occur. There are persons who do not believe in God, and they are reasonable in doing so. They may have studied the evidence, explored their motives of belief, examined why others who believe do so, and so on. Yet despite all of this, they still do not believe, and they see no good reason to believe. Furthermore, the argument goes, such nonbelieving persons may be doing so in a morally innocent manner. Their nonbelief is not due to a resistance or opposition to God, a desire that God not exist, a moral repugnance to the very idea of God’s existing, or any such thing. They simply do not believe and have no good reason to believe. But a perfectly loving God, it seems, would ensure belief in God by all reasonable persons. Since there is reasonable nonbelief, then, we have solid evidence that God, as a perfectly loving, caring being, does not exist. We can delineate Schellenberg’s argument, what we will call here the Divine Hiddenness Argument, this way:

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1 If there is a God, he is perfectly loving. 2 If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur. 3 Reasonable nonbelief occurs. 4 No perfectly loving God exists (from 2 and 3). 5 Hence, there is no God (from 1 and 4).5 This argument is valid (which means that if the premises are true, then the conclusion logically follows): God does not exist. But are the premises true? Before tackling this argument, we can perhaps bolster it further by adding the challenge posed by the uneven distribution of belief in God around the world.6 Why, if God exists, is reasonable nonbelief so much more widespread in certain parts of the world than in others? Belief in the God of theism is virtually nonexistent in Sri Lanka, large portions of India and China, and many countries in Africa, to cite several significant examples. Yet in other parts of the word theism is widespread. Why would a perfectly loving God permit such global unevenness in theistic belief?

Some Possible Reasons for Divine Hiddenness The problem of divine hiddenness is indeed a pernicious difficulty for theists. Some have even argued that the problem of divine hiddenness provides a better atheological argument (argument for atheism) than the more familiar arguments from evil described in Chapter 2. So how might the theist reply? Are there plausible reasons for divine hiding? One way a theist could reply to the Divine Hiddenness Argument is to deny the first premise that, if there is a God, he is perfectly loving.

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As noted in the previous chapter, this is not a common move, but it is an important one and has been made by some theists. These misotheists, as we saw, do believe that God exists, but they also believe that God is less than good—some even claim that God is evil. To mention yet another example, in her widely acclaimed novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neil Hurston reflects this viewpoint: “All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise, they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”7 These sentiments may or may not have been held by Hurston herself, but they do capture the enmity some people feel toward God. Perhaps none have felt more strongly this way than those who suffered through the Nazi concentration camps.8 For many there, the absence of God was glaring, and the silence of God was deafening. Another way a theist could reply to the Divine Hiddenness Argument is to deny the third premise that reasonable nonbelief occurs. Some theists have, in fact, maintained that any nonbelief in God is unreasonable.9 There is no universally held definition of “unreasonable,” but theists who take this approach typically affirm that every case of unbelief is one in which the person is epistemically culpable for their lack of belief. That is, while they do not believe in God, they should so believe. God has made his existence available in such a way to warrant belief in him. I disagree. I think there are cases of reasonable nonbelief, so the rest of the responses to the Divine Hiddenness Argument will presuppose this view. A third way to respond to the Divine Hiddenness Argument is to challenge the second premise, which states that if a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur.10 How so? It may be that those persons who do not believe in God are, for one reason

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or another, not in a state of mind to hold the belief that God exists. For example, given a person’s current attitude toward the notion of God, it could be that if the person were (at least up to this point in time) confronted with the reality of the divine presence, rather than entering into a meaningful relationship with God she would instead shut herself off from God. In this case, it’s not that the person has already shut herself off from God, but rather that if she were put in a position of having a divine encounter, she would not in fact be receptive to it; she would “harden her heart” toward God instead. In cases like this, God hides. According to this view, it’s not that God wants to remain hidden or alienated from such individuals, but rather that some people are simply not prepared to believe in God and would in fact be worse off if God didn’t remain hidden to them. Related to this point, in the New Testament book, the Gospel of Matthew, the author records the words of Jesus to his disciples regarding why he spoke in parables: The reason I speak to them in parables is that “seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.” With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: “You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them.” (Mt. 13:13–16; italics added) According to the interpretation of this passage, Jesus’ reason for speaking in parables was that some people were not in a position to hear about God and the truths and purposes of God in a straightforward manner since they had shut their eyes and closed their ears (perhaps knowingly, freely, and culpably; perhaps not). The

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parables, then, were a means of getting those truths and purposes into human hearts and minds by veiling the message in such a way that it nonthreateningly and gradually was revealed to them. This veiling may be due to intentional (and so culpable) unreceptivity, or unintentional (and so nonculpable) unreceptivity. There are a number of reasons why a person, even though he is intellectually capable of believing that God exists, may not yet be receptive to such belief. For example, given his prior life experiences, he may have reason to doubt that God—a loving and beneficent reality who desires a relationship with him—exists. If he has experienced horrific trauma of one sort or another, say, this could produce psychological, emotional, or intellectual barriers to his believing that a perfectly loving God exists, or at least believing that a good God exists who loves and desires a relationship with him. So while someone in this case could well be intellectually capable of having such knowledge, a great amount of healing may need to occur before he would be in an emotional or psychological state such that he could form a proper and beneficial belief in God. Furthermore, given a person’s education and knowledge base, he or she may have reason to doubt that God (a loving and beneficent reality who desires a relationship with the person) exists. If one were trained in a certain school of analytic philosophy in the midtwentieth century, for example, he or she may have come to believe that the very notion of a personal God is a meaningless concept. If one is intellectually convinced that the notion of a personal God is meaningless, it would be difficult to believe that such a God exists—let alone that such a God desires to be known by and have a meaningful relationship with him. Related to these points, Paul Moser has argued that God remains hidden in order to prevent certain persons from coming to know God in an inappropriate and unhelpful manner. In sketching out

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his argument, Moser makes a distinction between propositional knowledge and filial knowledge. The former is knowledge that God exists. The latter is of a different order and is one in which a person “humbly, faithfully, and lovingly stands in a child’s relationship to God as the righteously gracious Father.”11 According to Moser’s account, God’s perfect love results in God’s bringing about our having both propositional and filial knowledge of himself. Filial knowledge is essential for a right relationship with God—one that is good for us. Moser describes it this way: Divine hiding, like everything else God does, seeks to advance God’s good kingdom by promoting what is good for all concerned. So we must keep divine hiding in the context of God’s main desire to have people lovingly know God and thereby to become loving as God is loving. . . . God desires that people turn, for their own good, to the loving God in filial communion and faithful obedience. God’s primary aim is not to hide but rather to include all people in God’s family as beloved children under God’s fatherly guidance. A loving filial relationship with God is God’s main goal for every human. This means that God wants us to love, to treasure, God as our Father, not just to believe that God exists (Deuteronomy 6:5; Mark 12:30; James 2:19). So production of mere reasonable belief that God exists will not meet God’s higher aim for us. For our own good, God is after something more profound and more transforming than simple reasonable belief about God. Mere reasonable belief is no match for personal transformation toward God’s loving character.12 Divine hiddenness, in his view, is thus rooted in divine love. Atheists and agnostics will likely not be pleased with these sorts of replies. John Loftus, for example, says this:

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Most people who suffer cry out to God for help in these times. They want to know God exists and cares. But God sits silently by and does nothing to show them that he exists and cares. Meister apologizes, because these sufferers need healing before God can help them. What? Isn’t God supposed to be the healer? “Heal thyself and then we can talk” is God’s nonresponse, according to Meister.13 If God were doing nothing in such a situation, I think that would indeed be problematic. But many theists, such as Moser, do not believe that God is doing nothing. In fact, they tend to believe that God is diligently working to bring healing into the person’s life who is suffering. So where is the evidence, one might ask? Again, it seems to come down to one’s worldview. Those who end up believing in God often share how God was working in them and through others for them during their suffering, even though they did not believe in God at the time. Those who do not end up believing in God often share how, despite their calling out to God during their times of suffering, there was only silence and absence. Another reason a theist can offer for why a person may not be in a position to have a relationship with God is that one’s free will to choose God could be in jeopardy if he or she were confronted with God’s presence.14 If God were not hidden, one would be unduly coerced, or forced, as it were, to believe that God exists. In that case one could not choose to believe that God exists. This limitation of epistemic freedom may well also affect one’s moral freedom, for one would likely do good or abstain from doing evil because of either fear of divine punishment or an egoistic desire for success rather than out of love for God, others, and the good. God is not interested in moral slaves, so he has made his existence and presence available, but noncoercively so. God’s hiding would, again, be due to his love and concern for all people, even those who are not yet ready or able to

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believe. God thus makes himself evident in proportion to a person’s readiness to receive him. Blaise Pascal is apt on the point: Willing to appear openly to those who seek Him with all their heart, and to be hidden from those who flee from Him with all their heart, [God] so regulates the knowledge of Himself that He has given signs of Himself, visible to those who seek Him, and not to those who seek Him not. There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.15 What about the question noted earlier concerning why, if God exists, reasonable nonbelief in the God of theism is so much more widespread in certain parts of the world than in others? A theist could reply, as William Lane Craig has, that all of those persons who would believe in God are given that opportunity to hear about God.16 Another response proffered by theists is that it’s not primarily propositional content about God that is important, but rather a heart surrendered to the good, the right, and the beautiful. Thus one may be in a relational state with the divine (who is ultimate goodness, the rightness, and beauty) and misunderstand its true nature, or one may not necessarily be aware of it at all.17 These various responses to the Divine Hiddenness Argument demonstrate that theists have reasons for maintaining that reasonable nonbelief could occur even if a perfectly loving God exists, contrary to premise 2. So the argument has not demonstrated that God, a perfectly beneficent and loving being, does not exist. But perhaps this should not be all that surprising since disproving the existence of God is no small feat! Even though God remains hidden from many people, then, and the silence of God often looms large, there are a number of reasons why divine hiddenness might be God’s modus operandi, if God does in fact exist. Divine hiddenness, then, may not

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be a form of evil after all. In fact, it could be a great good to a great many people.

Divine Hiddenness and Experiencing God God Experiences Before concluding this chapter, it’s important to note that divine hiddenness is certainly not the way all persons experience the world. Indeed, there are sane and intelligent people—and a good number of them—who claim to have had experienced the divine in some significant way. It is really quite surprising to see how many types of religious experiences have been recorded, and how diverse they turn out to be. Different schemas may be offered to classify the various types of religious experience, but here we will explore those experiences that include God as a personal (or at least not less than personal) and loving reality since these offer counter-evidence to the claim that God, if God exists, is silent. Let’s call these “God experiences.” Many people have had and recorded God experiences. The most common ones are dissimilar to human-to-human experiences. In the Hebrew Bible the prophet Elijah has a divine encounter that is characteristic of recorded experiences with God in that God does not speak with booming thunder: Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. (I Kings 19:11–12; NIV) As per a common interpretation of this passage there was no audible voice, no visible manifestation, no fanfare; it is a still, small

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voice—a gentle whisper. Speaking in the depths of one’s soul is how most people describe their experiences with God. While one may wish that God would make his presence known in ways more amenable to common human experience, theists argue God has chosen differently. The Spanish mystic and Carmelite nun, Saint Teresa of Avila (1515– 1582), for example, describes a related experience this way: I was at prayer on a festival of the glorious Saint Peter when I saw Christ at my side—or, to put it better, I was conscious of Him, for neither with the eyes of the body nor with those of the soul did I see anything. I thought He was quite close to me and I saw that it was He Who, as I thought, was speaking to me.18 Another point worth noting, though, is that not all God experiences are in the form of a still small voice; some of them have been described as being quite arresting and vivid. In his classic work on religious experience, William James documents many such divine encounters from across the religious traditions, including the following by a clergyman: I remember the night, and almost the very spot on the hill-top, where my soul opened out, as it were, into the Infinite, and there was a rushing together of the two worlds, the inner and the outer. It was deep calling unto deep, the deep that my own struggle had opened up within being answered by the unfathomable deep without, reaching beyond the stars. I stood alone with Him who had made me, and all the beauty of the world, and love, and sorrow, and even temptation. I did not seek Him, but felt the perfect unison of my spirit with His. The ordinary sense of things around me faded. For the moment nothing but an ineffable joy and exaltation remained. It is impossible fully to describe the experience. It was like the effect of some great orchestra when all the separate notes have melted into one swelling harmony that leaves the listener

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conscious of nothing save that his soul is being wafted upwards, and almost bursting with its own emotion. The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that He was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.19 Similarly, the following was described by an eminent Islamic convert: Allah attracted me to His light with irresistible strength, and I gladly yielded to Him. Everything seemed clear now, everything made sense to me, and I began to understand myself, the Universe and Allah. I was bitterly aware that I had been deceived by my dearest teachers, and that their words were only cruel lies, whether they were aware of it or not. My whole world was shattered in one instant; all concepts had to be revised. But the bitterness in my heart was amply superseded by the ineffable joy of having found my Lord at last, and I was filled with love and gratitude to Him. I still humbly praise and bless Him for His Mercy with me; without His help, I would have remained in darkness and stupidity forever.20 James includes numerous examples of such experiences from across the religious spectrum. And countless books and websites that are devoted to documenting God experiences and other types of religious experience are now available. It seems that such experiences are not as uncommon as one might suppose.

Challenges to the Idea of God Experiences There have been innumerable experiences of the divine reported in detail by religious adherents across cultures and throughout history.

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Some philosophers have argued that given the widespread occurrence of such experiences, an argument for the existence of God can be culled from them. Hindu philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan writes, “The possibility of the experience [of God] constitutes the most conclusive proof of the reality of God.”21 At first blush such experiences do seem to provide hard evidence for God. After all, surely the many God experiences that have occurred are not all false or delusory. Or are they? There are various arguments claiming that even if there are significant numbers of God experiences, this does not constitute evidence for the reality of God. One argument against the claim that God experiences provide evidence for God is that such experiences are not verifiable as are other kinds of experiences. Compare a religious experience, sensing the presence of God, with a perceptual experience: seeing a RoseBreasted Grosbeak (a bird indigenous to my area). If someone claims to see a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak in their backyard, it’s easy enough to confirm. Other perceptions can be used to verify whether the claim is true or not—other observers can see it, take pictures of it, or perhaps even catch it. But what about the claim of someone to have had a religious experience? How can this sort of claim be verified? Certainly not in the same way as the bird experience. What other kind of verification might be offered?22 In philosophy a distinction is sometimes made between firstperson psychological reports, such as “I seem to see a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak,” and perceptual experiences, such as “I see a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak.” With the latter kind of experiences a person can be mistaken. I thought it was a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, but it turned out to be a Downy Woodpecker (I actually made this mistake one day). With the former kind of experience a person cannot be mistaken. Even though it turned out to be a Downy Woodpecker, the claim that “I seem to see a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak” is nonetheless true. I did

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seem to see one. These sorts of first-person, private reports are about the goings on of one’s own mind and are referred to as incorrigible experiences; while I might be mistaken about what I see, I cannot be mistaken that I seem to see what I do. The question then becomes whether religious experiences are corrigible or incorrigible. If they are corrigible, they may well be mistaken. If they are incorrigible, then the experiencer cannot be mistaken about them. However, in that case they are subjective private experiences and so do not provide objective evidence or justification for their being about a reality outside the mind of the one having them. Whether religious experiences are corrigible or incorrigible is a matter of continued philosophical debate.23 Another argument against the claim that God experiences provide justification for believing that God exists is that there are scientific explanations for religious experience. According to Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), certain desires for protection and care are satisfied through the illusion of divine Providence.24 Freud argued that feelings of helplessness and fear in childhood foster a desire for fatherly, loving protection. This desire, or wish, for a protective individual continues on into adulthood and demands a greater, more powerful being than a human father. This desire, combined with desires for universal justice and a continuation of our own existence after death, is satisfied through the formation of the illusion of divine Providence: a person projects the existence of a God. So God experiences can be explained as psychological projections that fulfill certain fundamental human needs and longings. There is, then, no evidence from such experiences that God was actually involved in them or that God truly exists. But perhaps this conclusion is too quick, for even if one has a God experience that is caused by certain needs and desires, so what? That does not discount the experience or the content of the experience. Suppose that one believes in the existence of a personal and powerful

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God because of a deep-seated need for a heavenly Father. That does not prove that a personal and powerful God does not exist, nor does it prove that God does not show up in one’s experiences. Just because one desires something to be true does not make it false (thank God!). It could be, for example, that God utilizes the notion of familial relationship as a pedagogical tool for teaching people about who he is and to prepare them for experiencing him. In fact, this is precisely what many Jews, Christians, and Muslims actually believe and how they interpret passages in their sacred scriptures, which refer to God as “Father.” More recently, neuroscientific advancements have demonstrated that human minds may have natural affinities for religion, and that religious experience may be the result of neurophysiological causes. Some researchers have concluded, therefore, that religious experiences are ultimately false or delusory—that belief in God and experiences of God are mere tricks played on us by our minds. But this conclusion is not necessarily true either, for even if it can be shown that there are neurophysiological explanations for religious belief and experiences, it does not follow that they are false or delusory. Most theists historically have held that scientifically adequate explanations can be offered for most natural events. But they also believe that these events are grounded in the causal actions of God. For example, many theists believe that the evolution of living organisms can be described in scientific language, but that this does not necessarily eliminate the role of God in guiding the processes and sustaining each and every element of them. So despite the scientific explanation of God experiences and beliefs, there is no proof that God isn’t their ultimate cause, nor does it demonstrate that a natural explanation is sufficient. This brings to a close in this book the issue of whether religious experience provides evidence for God. Many certainly desire that

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God, if God exists, would make his existence more evident. But it may be that God is not totally elusive after all, at least if one is interested in such a divine encounter and perhaps even in being transformed by such an experience.

For Further Reading Drange, Theodore. 1998. Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God. New York: Prometheus Books. (A nontheist presents arguments against belief in God, including an emphasis on divine hiddenness.) Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Paul Moser, eds. 2002. Divine Hiddenness: New Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A scholarly collection of essays by theists and nontheists.) James, William. 1916. Originally published in 1902. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Longmans, Green. (A classic work on religious experience, including God experiences.) Loftus, John W. 2015. How to Defend the Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist. Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing. (Loftus provides some insightful criticisms of arguments by Christian thinkers, including those having to do with the problem of evil.) Moser, Paul. 2008. The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Advanced. For a very accessible presentation of some of the main themes in this book, see Moser’s Why Isn’t God More Obvious? Atlanta, GA: RZIM, 2000.) Rea, Michael. 2014. Evil and the Hiddenness of God. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. (A rich and diverse collection of essays, historical and contemporary, on the topic.) Schellenberg, John. 1993. Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Examines various attempts by theists to deal with divine hiddenness and argues that they fall short of rebutting the arguments he presents.) Schellenberg, John. 2017. “Evil, Hiddenness, and Atheism.” In Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 108–23. (Schellenberg argues that the Divine Hiddenness Argument is more fundamental than the Argument from Evil.)

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7 Evil, Atheism, and the Problem of Good God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between the three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the theologian, it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three. —J. L. MACKIE1

In previous chapters we have seen that the reality of evil poses a serious problem, or rather set of problems, for those who believe in a good, wise, and all-powerful deity. As such, the theist bears the burden of making sense of evil in a world that was created by God for, according to the theistic view, this is a world that God designed, created, and sustains. So why is this world so deeply flawed? Why is there so much pain and suffering? The last several chapters explored attempts at making sense of this. But it is also the case that nontheists face challenges, given the reality of evil. There are a variety of nontheistic worldviews, and in the next chapter we will explore Buddhist and Hindu accounts of evil. In this chapter we examine some problems of evil confronting the polar opposite view of theism: atheism.

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Problems of Evil and the Problem of Good At first glance it may seem that those who deny the existence of God are immune to theoretical problems raised by evil, maintaining that evil is simply inherent to the natural world. While theist and atheist can agree that catastrophe, suffering, and nefariousness in all their odious manifestations are matters to oppose whenever and wherever possible, it seems that it is the theist who has her back against the wall given their occurrences, for she is the one who affirms the existence of a divine being who could, and indeed should, eliminate evil. Nevertheless, evil persists. The atheist, in not believing in the existence of a perfectly good, loving, and powerful deity, appears to have nothing to explain with respect to evil. The world is just the way the world is, period. Further reflection, however, reveals that matters may not be so straightforward after all. Sure, disaster, pain, and suffering are features of the natural world. But are they in fact evil? As we saw in Chapter 1, there is a moral dimension to evil, just as there is a moral dimension to good. To speak of disaster, suffering, and pain as evil is to make a moral claim about them; it is to claim that such things are wrong and should not be the case. The various connections between the good and right and the evil and wrong are complex, to be sure, and we won’t tackle all of them here. But important questions worth exploring in this chapter are these: What exactly is evil as per the atheistic view of the world, and why is it so? Is there an objective reality to evil, or is it merely subjective? And how are we to distinguish between good and evil on an atheistic account? Furthermore, when atheists claim that evil provides evidence against the existence of God, to what moral standard are they subscribing in making this judgment? The various problems atheists face can perhaps best be brought to light by considering a true but very disturbing example. Some years ago serial killer Ted Bundy, who confessed to murdering over

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thirty women, was interviewed about his gruesome proclivities. Here are the frightening words he offered to one of his victims as he later articulated them to his attorneys: Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either “right” or “wrong” . . . I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable “value judgment” that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these “others”? Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as “moral” or “good” and others as “immoral” or “bad”? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me—after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.2 Let me be clear that in using this example I am not implicating atheists of being Ted Bundy–like in any sense (atheists are just as horrified by such evils as everyone else). However, an important question emerges when reflecting on Bundy’s words: On what moral grounds can the atheist provide a reasonable response to Bundy’s position as he articulates it? The options are fairly limited. If good and evil, right and wrong, have nothing to do with God, as atheists

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suppose, what do they have to do with? There are a number of replies that can be offered from an atheistic perspective. One view an atheist can affirm is moral relativism, either personal or cultural. For the personal moral relativist, morality is an individual matter; you decide for yourself what is right and wrong, good and evil. Right and wrong, good and evil, are in the eye of the beholder. Problems with this view, however, are widely recognized and multifarious. For one, interpersonal critique or criticism would be ruled out by definition. A personal moral relativist could never meaningfully tell someone else he or she is wrong, for going by this view everyone determines what right and wrong are. You could never consistently maintain that what someone else was doing was good or evil for them, for they determine what is good and what is evil; they make it so by their believing it to be so. What could one say to Bundy on this view? Not much, other than something such as “I don’t like what you believe and what you do; it offends me how you brutalize women.” For the personal relativist, though, what difference does it really make if someone else is offended by his or her beliefs or actions? According to this view, when my morality clashes with your morality, there is no ultimate arbiter or standard other than perhaps that the stronger of us forces the other to agree. But this sort of “might makes right” ethic has horrific consequences, and one need only be reminded of the Nazi reign of terror to see such power morality in full bloom. What about cultural moral relativism—the view that moral values, right and wrong, are the constructions of culture or society? At first glance, grounding morality in culture seems to be an improvement over individual relativism. Indeed, since at least some moral values do vary from culture to culture, this view appears to reflect the way morality actually works. Consider these two examples:

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The Eskimos see nothing wrong with infanticide, whereas many other North Americans believe infanticide is immoral.

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The Greeks believed it was wrong to eat the dead, whereas the Callatians believed it was right to eat the dead.3

Countless other examples could be cited as well. So, the cultural relativist claims, morals are simply cultural inventions. On deeper reflection, though, the problems with cultural relativism are just as challenging as those with individual relativism. One problem is that if good and evil are cultural inventions, then it would always be wrong for someone within that culture to speak out against the moral norms of that culture. If good and evil are defined by culture, then how can good and evil ever be challenged within culture? Going by this view, all moral reformers—William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus, or Mahatma Gandhi, to name a few as examples—would all be wrong in challenging the moral norms of their respective cultures. Furthermore, it would be inappropriate for one culture to criticize the actions of another culture. It would have been wrong for the British in 1940s to criticize the genocidal actions of the Nazis. It would be wrong for North Americans today to criticize earlier Americans for owning slaves. And so on. Many academic atheists writing books on evil and morality today reject moral relativism—both individual and cultural. Leading atheist Sam Harris, for example, offers a number of arguments against it. In a manner reminiscent of C. S. Lewis, Harris argues that relativism is self-refuting: Moral relativism . . . tends to be self-contradictory. Relativists may say that moral truths exist only relative to a specific cultural framework—but, this claim about the status of moral truth purports to be true across all possible frameworks. In practice, relativism

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almost always amounts to the claim that we should be tolerant of moral difference because no moral truth can supersede any other. And yet this commitment to tolerance is not put forward as simply one relative preference among others deemed equally valid. Rather, tolerance is held to be more in line with the (universal) truth about morality than intolerance is. (The Moral Landscape, 45, italics in original) In order to complain about evil within a culture, Harris and other atheists have argued, there needs to be some standard that transcends culture by which to make such a complaint. Cultural relativism provides no such standard. The second option open to the atheist is that offered by Friedrich Nietzsche.4 Nietzsche’s writings are terse and dense, and his writing style both evocative and elusive. Even Nietzsche scholars note that it is often difficult to know for sure whether you’ve actually understood him. I suspect that is intentional. But several features of his views are, I think, fairly clear. Nietzsche is perhaps best known for his claim that “God is dead,” the idea killed by human beings. Now that we have killed God—killed the belief that God is really there, that is—we need to move beyond the language of good and evil. Such language had its part to play in the unfolding drama of early human development, but its time has now past. Good and evil as traditionally understood are no longer useful and should be jettisoned. For Nietzsche, it seems, moral language is just that: language. Words do not correspond to metaphysical realities. Words are simply words. Language does provide a certain order to the world, but the language of good and evil needs to be replaced with a new language—one that does not carry the metaphysical and theological baggage of earlier times. Nietzsche does not reject morality conceived of as a sort of rank order of values. In his book Beyond Good and Evil, he criticizes an

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objective, universal morality that applies to humanity as a whole and argues for different kinds of moralities—each of which applies to different contexts. He understands nature as a struggle for survival, and sees one type of morality as more appropriate for those who are in a dominant role in society—those who are stronger, healthier, more powerful. Another type of morality is best suited for those in more subordinate roles—those who are weaker, sickly, less able to lead and control. Nietzsche challenges the widely held moral idea that destruction, exploitation, and domination are morally objectionable behaviors in each and every case. In fact, he maintains that living beings desire to demonstrate their strength and manifest their “will to power.” What is strong wins. That is the universal law. To speak of right and wrong per se makes no sense at all. No act of violence, rape, exploitation, destruction, is intrinsically “unjust,” since life itself is violent, rapacious, exploitative, and destructive and cannot be conceived otherwise.5 Again, there are various interpretations of Nietzsche on the matter. It may seem strictly Darwinian: the strong survive; the weak die off. But for Nietzsche, life is not mere survival. It is a struggle for expressing oneself. In this struggle, the will to power is a striving to do what one loves. It is up for debate about whether this love could involve the domination or exploitation of others. Some Nietzsche think not; others disagree. In any case, most of us would agree, I think, that a view of morality as will to power in this latter sense, with its possible domination and exploitation of others, seems just as problematic and troubling as moral relativism. It is elitist to the extreme in which the “superior” individuals cooperate in their struggle against the “plebians” (the great masses of humanity). This view seems more brutish and

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potentially cruel than any “moral theory” I can imagine! In fact, Bundy’s statements to the terrified woman he was about to rape seem quite congruent with this “moral” understanding. The third approach some atheists have taken is that of grounding morality (good and evil, right and wrong) in biological evolution. This is the approach of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. In The Selfish Gene, he states that “we are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”6 Morality is not objective on this account, and may even seem to be meaningless. Dawkins claims elsewhere: “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is.”7 For Dawkins, our moral beliefs are predetermined aspects of our genetic machinery, selfishly programmed to advance the gene pool. He grants that selfishness does not at first glance appear to offer a solid foundation for a moral theory. But further reflection leads to the conclusion that it does. Morality is an evolutionary mechanism for gene replication. In his more recent book, The God Delusion, Dawkins clarifies and expounds on his position. He affirms that an obvious way in which genes ensure their own survival is by programming individual organisms to be selfish. However, he argues, sometimes genes influence organisms to act altruistically in order to ensure their own selfish survival. This happens most commonly with an organism’s close kin: brothers and sisters and children. The reason for this, he says, is that when genes program particular organisms to favor their own genetic family, they are more likely to replicate themselves.

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Besides genetic kinship, another factor that is important in Dawkins’s moral account is what he calls “reciprocal altruism.” This occurs not only with close relatives, but also among various members of the species and even outside the species. This is the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” idea, and it is not uncommon among members of the animal kingdom. For example, in the bird population where there exist harmful parasites, birds perform mutual grooming techniques on fellow birds to remove the parasites since they have no limbs to remove them themselves. With certain bird populations, there are three types of birds that Dawkins labels “Suckers,” “Cheaters,” and “Grudgers.” Suckers are those birds that groom any other bird; Cheaters are those birds that refuse to groom another bird unless it presents itself to be groomed; and Grudgers are the ones that groom only those who reciprocate in grooming them. Grudgers groom other Grudgers and Suckers, but they will not groom Cheaters. Of the three types, the Grudgers are the ones that flourish, demonstrating the evolutionary value of reciprocal altruism. There are two additional elements to Dawkins’s moral account. The first is a reputation for generosity in which an organism acts altruistically so that others will form the belief that it is generous. Especially in human society, where language and gossip are involved, one’s reputation is significant. If one has a reputation for cheating and stealing and lying, he or she will not generally have the same survival value as someone else with a reputation of being “moral”: kind, generous, and altruistic. So your gene pool is more effectively advanced when others believe that you are moral. The next element is buying authentic advertising, the notion that an organism acts morally in order to prove that he has more than another, that he is dominant and superior and so capable of acting altruistically. Only a superior individual can afford to be generous, and by making one’s altruistic activities known, the individual demonstrates to others

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one’s superiority and dominance. Dawkins offers an example of this principle in nature with the Arabian babblers, little birds that live in social groups. Dominant birds in the group assert their superiority by feeding subordinates, and they compete for the role of sentinel, risking their own lives by sitting on a high branch and warning others eating on the ground of impending dangers. Their reason for doing so is the express purpose of demonstrating their superiority and thus attracting mates. So we have the four major components of Dawkins’s attempt to provide a justification for acting morally and for having moral beliefs: 1 genetic kinship: helping one’s family members, even at one’s own expense; 2 reciprocation: beyond one’s kin, the repayment of favors given where both sides benefit from the transaction; 3 acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness: convincing others that one is moral; 4 buying authentic advertising: strutting one’s good deeds before others to impress them, demonstrate one’s superiority, and thus secure a mate. We can summarize Dawkins’s position this way: our genes are preprogrammed to selfishly replicate themselves. Nevertheless, individual organisms don’t always appear to act selfishly; they also act altruistically and morally as this offers better gene propagation over the long term. It appears that naturalistic evolution has provided us with four fundamental principles for being “moral” animals. Dawkins’s view, however, seems to miss key elements of a plausible moral theory. For example, according to this account a person is kind to his neighbor, rather than raping her, say, because he’s been preprogrammed by his genes to do so (at least most individuals have

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been so preprogrammed), and he’s been programmed so only because acting this way confers evolutionary advantage to the organism. There is no objective good and evil here; there is no real right and wrong. We simply call certain things “evil” and others “good” or “right” and “wrong” because our genes have, through eons of evolutionary struggle, advanced by our believing this way. But is it plausible to believe that rape, murder, and the like are “evil” only in the sense that they have become socially taboo due to purposes of evolutionary advantage? Would this be a reasonable response to Bundy? A fourth approach to an atheistic account of morality has been put forth by evolutionary ethicist and atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse and his colleague Edward O. Wilson. They agree with Dawkins that morality is rooted in evolution, but they disagree with his conclusion that there are therefore principles by which to ground moral objectivity: Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will—or in the metaphorical roots of evolution or any other part of the framework of the Universe. In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. Ethics is produced by evolution but is not justified by it because, like Macbeth’s dagger, it serves a powerful purpose without existing in substance. . . . Unlike Macbeth’s dagger, ethics is a shared illusion of the human race.8 So while most people believe that moral values are objectively real, it turns out that they are not. They are merely illusions foisted on us through evolutionary processes, the result of which is that our species continues to flourish and advance. Unlike Dawkins, who attempts to provide scientific “reasons for individuals to be altruistic, generous,

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and ‘moral’ toward each other,”9 Ruse and Wilson unabashedly acknowledge that good and evil are simply unreal. This is a bold claim, and it is an impressive one for their unfrivolous consistency and willingness to follow their position to what they take to be its logical conclusion, as difficult as it may be to affirm. In their view, we and our beliefs are simply the byproducts of a “nature red in tooth and claw.” Good and evil are illusory. The Edinburgh Review, a highly respected British magazine of the nineteenth century, observed that if people come to believe that morality is based on a naturalistic version of evolution, then most earnest-minded men will be compelled to give up these motives by which they have attempted to live noble and virtuous lives, as founded on a mistake; our moral sense will turn out to be a mere developed instinct. . . . If these views be true, a revolution in thought is imminent, which will shake society to its very foundations by destroying the sanctity of conscience and the religious sense.10 This may be overstating the case. But again, on the view of morality espoused by Ruse and Wilson, what could one say to Bundy? This view of right and wrong does not appear to provide what most people would view as a satisfactory account of morality—neither one that squares with what we know about good and evil (rape and murder are really wrong, whether Bundy agrees or not), nor one that provides a foundation for living the moral life. A fifth approach an atheist might take in accounting for good and evil is utilitarianism. In its most general form, this is the view that we always ought to do what will produce the greatest good— with “good” typically defined in terms of happiness or pleasure: the greatest happiness (or pleasure) for the greatest number. One recent form of utilitarianism has been articulated and defended by atheist

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Sam Harris.11 Harris argues that science can determine moral values, and that morality is grounded in consciousness and human wellbeing. That which is morally bad should be understood as the worst possible misery. Moral good, then, at a bare minimum, is to avoid the worst possible misery for every conscious being. This is a form of utilitarianism in which happiness or pleasure is replaced with well-being. Utilitarianism as a moral theory has some virtues. For one, at least some forms of it can be understood to be objective in nature rather than subjective and relative.12 As a general theory, it provides an answer, a guiding principle, for every moral situation: act in a way that promotes the most happiness (or pleasure or well-being). It also seems to get to the very heart of morality: alleviating human suffering and promoting human flourishing. But utilitarianism also raises moral conundrums, some of which are quite problematic. One obvious problem is this: how would we quantify, scientifically or otherwise, the happiness or well-being from a particular action when the consequences that follow from that action may well be virtually endless? And how would we measure, scientifically or otherwise, differences between various sorts of happiness or well-being? Additional problems loom. Suppose, for example, that we are weighing two actions, and each of them results in ten units of happiness or well-being (measuring such things no doubt raises challenges of its own!). The only difference between them is that one of the actions involves our telling the truth and the other one telling a lie. As per the utilitarianism account, the actions would be morally equivalent, since they would both bring about equal units of happiness. If truth is a good thing, which most of us take it to be, then the principles of utilitarianism have led us to an unacceptable moral conclusion: lying is morally equivalent to telling the truth. Another objection is even more disturbing. Suppose there is a utilitarian surgeon caring for

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three patients. One patient needs a liver transplant, one needs a heart, and the third needs two lungs. Fortuitously, a homeless man wanders into the clinic. After an examination, the surgeon determines that this man is in good health. So, utilizing utilitarian the principles, he concludes that by sacrificing the homeless man (removing his organs which will, undoubtedly, cause him to die), there will be more moral good accomplished—more happiness or well-being for more people. This conclusion of the “morally good” thing to do—taking the life of an innocent person for the well-being of several others—offends our moral sensibilities (at least it does mine, and I’ll bet it does yours as well). Indeed, it seems horribly wrong. Back to Bundy. Deciding whether it is good or evil, right or wrong, to rape and kill someone based on how much overall happiness or well-being follows from the act seems a very strange way to make moral decisions. I would say it makes an appalling one. Perhaps some version of utilitarianism can be developed to overcome these difficulties. If not, it seems doomed as a viable moral theory.13

The Problem of Good and the Moral Argument for God So far we have been focusing on evil and the problem atheists face, given its reality. But just as there is a problem of evil for atheists, so too there is a problem of good—a problem with affirming the reality of objective good in a world in which there is no transcendent, beneficent deity. Atheists and theists might agree that we have capacities for understanding moral truths, just as we have capacities for grasping mathematical or geometrical truths. We can know that treating homeless children with compassion is good, just as we can know that torturing babies for fun is evil. We are able to recognize virtues such as kindness, selflessness, mercy, and love, just as we are

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able to recognize vices such as selfishness, slander, prejudice, and hate. And we are able to distinguish between good persons, such as Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama, and evil persons, such as Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy. In his book, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis argues this point with respect to moral language. In noting that people quarrel and argue, he says that individuals do not merely clash or fight; no, they argue and debate about right and wrong. In doing so, their actions reflect the fact that they believe in objectively real moral principles. If morals were merely subjective feelings or desires, the only thing that would matter would be power. In a “might makes right” fashion, the stronger would simply crush the weaker. But what often happens between individuals (and larger groups, including nations) is that we say such things as “What you are doing is unfair,” or “You have no right to do what you are doing.” If these were mere emotional utterances, who would care about alleged rights or duties? Making such claims would be like saying “ouch” when stuck with a pin, or “I don’t like this” when being put upon. Indeed, the language common across cultures and nations includes praise and blame, which would have a very different connotation if there were no objective moral values. When the toll booth machine takes my money and the gate fails to open, I do not conclude that it is acting immorally (though I might call it a name or two). The booth is not morally blameworthy as is a thief when he steals my money. We use moral language for persons, and it is meaningful to us. And this meaningful language reflects our moral experiences, which are, arguable, of an objective sort. This only makes sense, Lewis argued, if moral truths are discovered, not invented, and if we have the capacity to discover them. Given all this, the question then becomes which view of the world—one with no objective morality or one with one—makes better sense of it. A number of atheists argue that, while there is an objectivity to good and evil, no God is necessary to affirm it. William

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Rowe, for example, says, “the claim that God is needed for morality to be objective is absurd.”14 Daniel Dennett states, “I have uncovered no evidence to support the claim that people, religious or not, who don’t believe in reward in heaven and/or punishment in hell are more likely to kill, rape, rob, or break their promises than people who do.”15 And Christopher Hitchens comments: “Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever.”16 One does not need a God to affirm the good or even to be good. On this point the evidence seems clear enough. Atheists can be as good (or evil) as theists. However, to know the good or live according to the good is quite different from justifying or having a foundation for the good. To affirm a knowledge of objective good and evil without providing an objective justification for good and evil is to affirm a kind of moral epistemology (a way of knowing moral truths) without providing a moral ontology (a foundation for moral truths) to substantiate it.17 The question at hand is this: If there is objective good and evil, what accounts for it in the atheistic view? What makes the atheists’ notions of good and evil, right and wrong, more than mere hunches, gut feelings, personal subjective opinions, or illusions emanating from various aspects of biological and social evolution? In order to have a consistent and reasonable objective moral stance—a moral stance in which you can substantiate the claim that this is right and that is wrong, this is good and that is evil—you need an objective grounding for it. Arguably, objective moral values require an objective foundation and explanation, and it seems that none of the atheistic accounts described above provides us with one. We can put the atheist’s problem concisely: 1 If objective moral truths and values exist, then there must be an objective basis for their existence.

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2 Atheism offers no objective basis for the existence of moral truths and values. 3 Therefore, for the atheist, objective moral truths and values must not exist. The problem is that most of us really do believe and act as though objective moral truths and values do exist. Some things really are good, and others really are evil. Theists argue that such beliefs make sense if there exists a God—a morally perfect being who transcends the finite physical universe and in whom objective moral truths and values are grounded—but they do not make sense if the material universe is the totality of all that exists and human beings emerged from mere physical processes in this universe. For how is it possible for impersonal, purely natural processes to produce universal, objective moral truths and values? So we can add the further argument: 1 If there is no God, no objective moral truths and values exist. 2 Objective moral truths and values do exist. 3 Therefore, God exists. Surprisingly, then, rather than proffering evidence against God, the reality of objective moral truths and values has turned out to provide an argument for the existence of God! But perhaps we have come to our conclusion too quickly. Do we truly need to posit a God in order to ground objective moral truths and values? As we saw above, some atheists have affirmed that there are objective moral truths and values; that good and evil, right and wrong, transcend individuals and culture, but that their existence does not depend on God’s existence. Rather, good and evil are simply fundamental dimensions of reality; there are moral laws that are just as real as physical laws. Philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

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holds something like this view. “In fact,” he says, “many atheists are happy to embrace objective moral values. I agree with them. Rape is morally wrong. So is discrimination against gays and lesbians. Even if somebody or some group thinks that these acts are not morally wrong, they still are morally wrong.” He continues that“[agreeing that some acts are objectively morally wrong] implies nothing about God, unless objective values depend on God. Why should we believe that they do?”18 Objective moral values are simply a part of the universe in which we find ourselves. We might ask what accounts for, or explains, or grounds these values. Did the Big Bang event somehow spew forth nonphysical values and moral laws? Sinnott-Armstrong offers this explanation: “What makes rape immoral is that rape harms the victim in terrible ways. . . . What’s immoral about causing serious harms to other people without justification? . . . It simply is. Objectively.”19 Harming victims is bad, he says, so it is morally wrong. Rape is evil because it hurts someone. Nothing further needs to be explained. We can and should all agree that rape is immoral and harming others is evil, but affirming that something is immoral and evil and having a reasonable justification for its being so are two very different matters. To use a simple example, I could wholeheartedly believe that my automobile will turn on when I turn the key and yet have no understanding of auto mechanics. I could still function well in society, driving from place to place, and never consider what is involved, electrically and electromechanically, in the process of the switch causing the engine to turn on. If someone asked me to provide an explanation or justification for the automobile turning on when I turn the key and my reply would simply be “It just does,” that would be incomplete. The fact of the matter is that the flow of an electric charge through the switch to the starter (among other factors) provides an

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explanation for the engine turning on when the key is turned. This is what accounts for the fact that when I turn the key the engine starts. To have a full explanation for cases such as this, we need something more than “it just does.” Similarly, it can be argued that the same need for explanation applies to good and evil. If one replies to the question of why raping a person is evil by saying that “it hurts the person,” and that the reason hurting someone is evil is because “it just is,” do we really have an explanation? Many theists argue that we do not. Many atheists, such as Sinnott-Armstrong, argue that we do—that there are brute givens in our world, and moral truths and values are examples of them. Both atheists and theists end up affirming brute givens. For many theists, the existence of God is a brute given. Is that a good place for the questions to stop? What are your brute givens, and why? I leave it up to you to decide whether Sinnott-Armstrong’s or some other atheistic account provides a plausible reply for Bundy.

Concluding Reflections In this chapter we have seen that the theist is not alone in having problems due to the reality of evil. The atheist does as well. We explored six different ways in which an atheist might provide an accounting for the moral notions of good and evil that we experience: moral relativism, “might makes right,” Dawkins’s evolutionary morality, morality as evolutionary illusion, utilitarianism, and atheistic moral objectivism (the brute givenness of objective moral truths and values). The first five accounts seem to me to miss the mark with respect to how most people think about morality and the language we use to express what we mean by it. Most of us believe that rape, murder, selfishness, and the like are really bad—objectively

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so, and that kindness, generosity, and selfless love are really good— objectively so. If the first five accounts were the only options available to the atheist, it seems to me that the atheist would be doomed in her ability to offer a satisfactory account of morality—one that provides a basis for real right and wrong, good and evil. But the atheist is not necessarily left in a moral bog; there is another game in town. Perhaps there are objective moral values that are simply a part of the universe we inhabit, and their existence does not depend on the reality of a transcendent, morally perfect God. How are we to know? In making this kind of assessment, no amount of scientific research will provide the answer. As with many of the deepest issues humanity has struggled with, we have arrived at a foundational level of philosophical and moral intuitions and reasoning. Here there will be dialogue and disagreement; there will be no universal consensus. But one thing is for certain. Neither theists nor atheists are immune to the theoretical difficulties raised by the reality of evil.

For Further Reading Baggett, David and Jerry Walls. 2011. Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (The authors argue that moral notions—right and wrong, good and evil—require God as their foundation.) Copan, Paul. 2008. “God, Naturalism, and the Foundations of Morality.” In Robert Stewart (ed.), The Future of Atheism: Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett in Dialogue. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. (This article, which argues that objective moral values exist and are dependent on God, can also be found online at http://www.paulcopan.com/articles/pdf/God-naturalismmorality.pdf.) Mitchell, Basil. 1980. Morality: Religious and Secular. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Argues for the importance of religion for the moral life.) Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1973. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin Books. (The classic work by Nietzsche, which rejects the Western notions of truth and God, good and evil.)

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Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. 2009. Morality Without God. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Sinnott-Armstrong argues for the independence of morality from religion.) Smart, J. J. C. and Bernard Williams. 1973. Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A famous debate on the issue.)

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8 Evil and Suffering in Hinduism and Buddhism As the young calf is able to recognize its mother from among a thousand cows, so does karma find the person destined to experience it. As the flowers and fruits of a tree, unurged by visible influences, never miss their proper season, so does karma done previously bring about its fruits in proper time. —MAHABHARATA, 13.7

Problems of evil generally arise within the context of theism, and it is commonly assumed that nontheistic religions are devoid of such difficulties. In fact, whatever one’s religious tradition, every conscious person has had to deal with the experience of evil in his or her life. Given its ubiquity and significance, all the major world religions have addressed the subject. So far this book has focused on debates and issues relevant to theism or atheism. In this chapter we will examine the ways in which two major nontheistic religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, address evil and suffering, for interest in them is becoming increasingly important in the West, and they offer unique and fascinating solutions to problems raised by evil.

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Karma and Rebirth To begin with, it is important to note that within every major religion is a belief about a transcendent reality underlying the natural, physical world. In Western religion,1 by which I refer primarily to the three religions of Abrahamic descent, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, this transcendent reality is generally conceived of in terms of a personal God. That is, God is personal at least in the sense that God has intentions, purpose, and will. God is also the creator and sustainer of the world, and God is perfect in every respect, including perfect power, knowledge, love, and wisdom. In Eastern religion, and here I refer primarily to Buddhism and some forms of Hinduism, the transcendent reality is understood quite differently. It is an absolute state of being rather than a personal, omniscient, omnipotent Creator. It is basically beyond description for it is undifferentiated, Absolute Reality. Hindus refer to it as Brahman. For Buddhists, the name varies; Shunyata for example, or Nirvana. These unique conceptions of Ultimate Reality bring with them distinct understandings of other significant issues as well, including evil and suffering. Also, Western and Eastern religious traditions have different foci when it comes to evil and suffering. As we have already seen, the Western traditions are primarily focused on making sense of evil in a world created by God, or justifying the actions, nature, or existence of God, given the reality of evil in the world. In the Indian traditions, notably Hinduism and Buddhism, there is also an attempt to explain the evil, pain, and suffering in the world. However, for these traditions, the primary concern is not typically with God, but rather with justice, moral law, and moral chance. While they seek an explanation for evil, these religions do not generally seek an accounting of the ways and nature of God (for most Buddhists, e.g., there is no God) because of evil.2

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Within Hinduism and Buddhism, the doctrines of karma and rebirth developed as an explanation for the problem of evil. Or, more specifically, as a way of explaining why there is evil and good, pain and pleasure, misery and happiness. At first glance it seems that there is no algorithm or set of calculations by which to make sense of the reasons that these different experiences occur and when they occur. They seem to be random. A tornado swirls through a town, killing some of its inhabitants and sparing others. Two children are born into a loving, caring family; one dies of leukemia as a young child, the other lives into old age. Lightning strikes a tree in a dry forest and a fire ensues; some of the animals escape unscathed while others burn in agony. Furthermore, many times good people suffer and wicked people flourish. It’s not uncommon for the selfless to be taken advantage of and for the selfish to prosper. It appears that much of what happens to someone is up to chance. But this cannot be correct, many Indian thinkers have argued, for in that case there would be no cosmic justice. There is a sense in all of us, or at least many of us, that universal justice does exist. One of the reasons we do the right and avoid the wrong, that we value the good and reject the evil, is because of the belief that there is a connection between our moral actions and the results that follow from them. If we do what’s right, there will be reward; if we do what’s wrong, there will be punishment. In one way or another, all of the major religious traditions affirm this idea. So how is this cosmic justice problem to be solved? The Hindu and Buddhist solutions to this problem is karma (or kamma in Pali). The term karma has various meanings. It literally means deed or action: what one does. It can also mean one’s intention or motivation for a given action, or what happens to an individual. Its broader meaning, sometimes referred to as the “law of karma,” is a law of moral causation. Understood this way, it involves causal connections linking what an individual does to what happens to him

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or her. Many people have a sense of this in the way they view the world; it’s not unique to Hindus and Buddhists. Many people believe, for example, that what goes around comes around, or that we reap what we sow. It is not uncommon among human beings to think that there is cosmic justice—that goodness is rewarded and evil punished. In Western religions this entails God’s governing the universe, including the view (i.e., for some theists) that those who are good and forgiven by God are rewarded in heaven and those who are evil and reject the grace of God suffer in hell. For Hindus and Buddhists, karma is the better solution. So how does karma work? There are different sorts of explanations offered by various Hindu and Buddhist thinkers. In general, karma is a comprehensive causal law in which an individual’s actions determine his or her future situations and experiences. Fundamental to karma is the claim that universal justice is accomplished in that the good and evil experienced by an individual are not due to chance, but are the result of actions the individual performed in the past—either in this life or in a previous one. Karma preserves the moral law in that if one does what is right and good, there will be reward; if one does what is wrong and evil, there will be punishment. While it may seem that justice does not always prevail—that some who do good suffer and some who do evil flourish—nevertheless, it will prevail. For even if justice is not be meted out in this life, it will be eventually. A person could steal from someone and yet never pay for that action in this life. But she will ultimately pay the price. She may, for example, be reborn in another life where someone steals from her. So too if someone does a very kind deed toward another, he or she may not receive a reward for it in this life. But it will happen. The cosmic scales are eventually balanced in every case. Justice is absolute. Central to the law of karma, then, is reincarnation or rebirth, the view that the true self transmigrates from one physical body to the

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next after death. Every human being has lived a former life, perhaps as another human being or perhaps as another kind of organism—an animal or an insect. Those who affirm rebirth and karma often point to a difficulty they see with the Western view of justice and the inequalities experienced in this life: it seems exceedingly unfair that one child is born healthy into a wealthy, loving family, for example, whereas another child is born sickly into a poor, cruel environment. If there is a personal creator God who brought these two persons into the world, such a God seems to be unloving and unjust. However, if the two children are reaping the consequences of actions they performed in previous lives, this provides a moral justification for the inequalities. Another reason sometimes given for the belief in rebirth is that many people claim to have experienced a previous life, and sometimes they can even document events that have occurred hundreds or thousands of years prior to their birth.3 In fact, there has been extensive research on alleged cases of reincarnation.4 I include one here that I find fascinating. It involves the case of Purnima Ekanayake, a young girl from Sri Lanka, who was studied by a psychologist from the University of Iceland, Erlendur Haraldsson, from 1996 to 1999, and has been investigated by many other scholars and researchers as well. When Purnima was three years old (this was in 1990), she began sharing with her family experiences that she claimed happened to her in a previous life. Her stories started in the course of her mother’s distress over a nearby traffic accident when Purnima comforted her by saying that it was because of a similar accident that she herself had come to the family. She provided graphic details about being involved in a bicycle accident with a large vehicle while selling incense. She said she died in the accident. She continued with her stories, providing her mother with a description of her previous family’s incense-making business, specific details about products they made called Ambiga

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and Geta Pichcha, and she also described an account of her marriage to a woman named Kusumi (she said she was a man in her previous life). Also, during her play time, she would regularly pretend that she was making incense, and she possessed detailed knowledge about its production. None of this did she learn from her current family. When Purnima turned four years old, she recognized a Buddhist temple on a television show. The temple was located 145 miles away from where she currently lived, and she had never been to this town (in her current life). Two years later (in 1993), her father enlisted the help of a coworker who often spent weekends in that distant town where that particular temple was located and asked him if he could find any information that matched Purnima’s stories. The coworker learned that out of three family-owned incense businesses in the town, only one, owned by L. A. Wijisiri, produced Ambiga and Geta Pichcha. Also, Wijisiri’s brother-in-law, Jinadasa Perera, had been struck by a bus while riding his bicycle to the market in September 1985. He had died instantly. To everyone’s surprise, when Purnima’s parents took her to meet Wijisiri and his family, she immediately picked Wijisiri out as her brother-in-law. The family corroborated the information that Purnima had shared about Jinadasa’s education, his mother, his two younger brothers, his marriage to two women, and the family’s incense business. Of the twenty claims that Purnima had made before their visit, only three were found to be inaccurate. Even more interestingly, not only did Purnima speak about actual, verifiable people and events, but she bore on her small body widespread birthmarks that matched the documented injuries from which Jinadasa died.5 This example is just one case of many alleged examples of reincarnation. In an assessment of whether such cases can provide actual support for reincarnation, one finds that the evidence is not as solid as one may hope. For example, one could ask: What it is that

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is being reincarnated? Is it some sort of soul or nonphysical stuff? If so, where is the evidence that such a reality exists? Many scientists and philosophers do not believe that such a thing actually exists. If it does, it could never be empirically verified, for it would not be the kind of thing that scientific instruments could test. If not a soul or nonphysical stuff, then what sort of entity is continuing to exist in the postmortem state? Next, if reincarnation does occur, why are memories of previous lives such rare occurrences? And why are there only memory fragments—bits and pieces of this event or that? There may be good answers to these questions, but at this point they seem to elude us. In any case, for the karmic solution to the problem of evil to be plausible, transmigration is a necessary element. The plausibility of the one hangs on the plausibility of the other. In order to press ahead on Hindu and Buddhist conceptions of evil and suffering and how karma and rebirth work in these traditions, it will be helpful to next examine in more detail their different views of Ultimate Reality.

A Hindu Conception of Ultimate Reality and Evil Hinduism, whose origins date back more than five thousand years, is one of the oldest religions in recorded history. It is syncretistic, engulfing many distinct belief systems and worldviews. In fact, there are theistic, pantheistic, panentheistic, and polytheistic forms of Hinduism. Given this wide diversity, it is impossible to provide a comprehensive summary of Hindu thought in a book such as this on just about any subject, not the least of which is the matter of evil and suffering.6 So for our purposes we will home in on one school of Hinduism that is frequently discussed in Western literature on evil

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and suffering: Advaita Vedanta. This Advaita (nondualist) school of Hinduism includes the belief that the Ultimate Reality, indeed all reality, is divine, or Brahman, and Brahman alone. The eighthcentury Indian philosopher Shankara provides one of the clearest articulations of this view: Brahman is the reality—the one existence, absolutely independent of human thought or idea. Because of the ignorance of our human minds, the universe seems to be composed of diverse forms. It is Brahman alone.7 This is pantheism in that reality is fully divine, and it is monism in that there is only one reality. All apparent distinctive characteristics within Brahman and between Brahman and the world are ultimately illusory. For the Advaitin, this is true of all (apparent) distinctions, between all (apparent) things, even between one’s self (Atman) and Brahman. On this version of Hindu thought, the Ultimate Reality is understood to be the undifferentiated Absolute.8 All is one and all is Brahman. Just as, my dear, the bees prepare honey by collecting the essences of different trees and reducing them into one essence, and as these (juices) possess no discrimination (so that they might say) “I am the essence of this tree, I am the essence of that tree,” even so, indeed, my dear, all these creatures though they reach Being do not know that they have reached the Being. Whatever they are in this world, tiger or lion or wolf or boar or worm or fly or gnat or mosquito, that they become. That which is the subtle essence, this whole world has for its self. That is the true. That is the self. That are thou.”9 For non-Advaitins, it might be difficult to conceive of the absence of all distinctions, especially between oneself (or apparent self, that

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is) and all other (apparent) things, including Brahman. From our experiences we tend to infer that we are unique individuals, separate identities from other people, things, and the Ultimate Reality. So a question that naturally arises is: Why are we not experiencing this undifferentiated unity with Brahman of which the Advaitin speaks? Why do we believe that we are separate, unique, individual entities and that distinctions are a real dimension of the world? One Advaitin answer is provided by Shankara. As he explains it, there is a distinction between Brahman understood as with qualities or attributes (Saguna Brahman) and Brahman understood as without qualities or attributes (Nirguna Brahman). Brahman with attributes, Saguna Brahman, is what we find in the sacred Hindu texts, and is especially important for meditation purposes. We are first introduced in these texts to Brahman as good, and perfect, and blissful, Lord and Creator, and so forth, as such language prepares us for the deeper (and more difficult to grasp) notion of the supremely real Brahman as having no attributes. But even Brahman without attributes, Nirguna Brahman, is often depicted in a manner that seems to offer some descriptors: Brahman is supreme. He is the reality—the one without a second. He is pure consciousness, free from any taint. He is tranquility itself. He has neither beginning nor end. He does not change. He is joy for ever. He transcends the appearance of the manifold, created by Maya. He is eternal, for ever beyond reach of pain, not to be divided, not to be measured, without form, without name, undifferentiated, immutable. He shines with His own light. He is everything that can be experienced in this universe. The illumined seers know Him as the uttermost reality, infinite, absolute, without parts—the pure consciousness. In Him they find that knower, knowledge and known have become one.10

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The question, then, is how could Brahman-with-attributes—the perfect Lord and Creator of all—bring about a world with evil in it? Here Shankara utilizes a free-will theodicy, albeit an Eastern version in which karma is central: The Lord . . . cannot be reproached with inequality of dispensation and cruelty, “because he is bound by regards.” If the Lord on his own account, without any extraneous regards, produced this unequal creation, he would expose himself to blame; but the fact is, that in creating he is bound by certain regards, i.e., he has to look to merit and demerit [karma]. Hence the circumstance of creation being unequal is due to the merit and the demerit of the living creatures created, and is not a fault for which the Lord it to blame.11 In other words, we have created evil through our own choices and actions. Brahman has established a moral order in which karma is a fundamental aspect, but Brahman is not culpable for the evil in it. In some ways this is very similar to the Western free-will theodicy we examined earlier in this book. Remember, though, that this response to evil is to be considered within the paradigm of the unenlightened understanding of Saguna Brahman—Brahman-with-attributes. For the truly enlightened, Brahman is attribute-less: all is one and undifferentiated. Ultimately, then, according to this Advaita Vedanta account, there is no difference between good and evil. At the level of the real, even merit and demerit are illusory. Such apparent distinctions are due to maya, the Sanskrit term for spiritual ignorance and illusion. So what brought about this unenlightened state? What initiated maya? If Brahman is fundamental reality—the all, including our own true self—then who or what is responsible for our current state? In Hindu mythology, maya is depicted as a divine goddess, Maya, who is a master of illusion. Many Hindu philosophers interpret maya not as a goddess

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but rather as the great veiling of the true, Unitary Self. It is unclear what actually originated the veil, and Hindu thinkers have suggested various possibilities. What they virtually all agree on, though, is that the universe it eternal. In that case perhaps there is need for an origin. Yet another question naturally arises from this view: How do we overcome this grand illusion? The Advaitin answer is that we need to advance to an enlightened state in order to overcome the veil of cosmic ignorance and so to escape the evil and suffering of the experienced world. We can accomplish this by moving beyond the rational mind, and we do this most effectively through meditation on the deep spiritual truths. Shankara clarifies: “Brahman is neither the gross nor the subtle universe. The apparent world is caused by our imagination, in its ignorance. It is not real. It is like seeing the snake in the rope. It is like a passing dream”— that is how a man should practice spiritual discrimination, and free himself from his consciousness of this objective world. Then let him meditate upon the identity of Brahman and Atman, and so realize the truth. . . . Give up the false notion that the Atman is this body, this phantom. Meditate upon the truth that the Atman is “neither gross nor subtle, neither short nor tall,” that it is self-existent, free as the sky, beyond the grasp of thought. Purify the heart until you know that “I am Brahman.” Realize your own Atman, the pure and infinite consciousness. Just as a clay jar or vessel is understood to be nothing but clay, so this whole universe, born of Brahman, essentially Brahman, is Brahman only—for there is nothing else but Brahman, nothing beyond That. That is the reality. That is our Atman. Therefore, “That art Thou”—pure, blissful, supreme Brahman, the one without a second.12

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By engaging in proper meditation, we can finally escape the illusory power of maya and enter into moksha—the enlightened realization that reality is one, multiplicity is illusion, only the undifferentiated Absolute is real, and pain and suffering are illusory. In doing this we can finally escape samsara, the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. We can achieve eternal bliss. While moksha is the goal, it is recognized in Advaita Vedanta (indeed in most forms of Hinduism) that true enlightenment will not be achieved immediately. Indeed, it may not be achieved in this life. It may take many rebirths before the power of maya and the negative influences of karma are completely expunged. But it is in this final state, this ultimate enlightenment, that evil and suffering will be understood for what they are: grand illusions brought about through a cosmic veil of ignorance.

A Buddhist Conception of Ultimate Reality and Suffering Buddhism emerged from the Hindu tradition in India around the fifth century BCE. Ultimate Reality in Buddhism, at least in one major Buddhist school called Madhyamika (the school of the “Middle Way”) as developed by Nagarjuna, is sunyata, which is translated as “Emptiness” or “The Void.” At first glance it may seem that emptiness and Ultimate Reality are contradictory notions. How can something real be empty? Many Buddhist scholars understand “being real” as “being independent of other things.” Buddhist scholar Masao Abe clarifies: The Buddhists believe that to be called “substantial or real” a thing must be able to exist on its own. However, if we look at the universe, we find that everything in it exists only in relation to something else. A son is a son only in relation to his father; and

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a father similarly in relation to his son. Fatherhood does not exist on its own but only in relation to something else. The Buddhists use the word svabhāva to denote existence on its own, that is, nondependent existence, which alone, according to them, qualifies as true or genuine existence. But if everything in the world depends on something else for being what it is, then nothing in the universe can be said to possess svabhāva or genuine existence; hence it is empty.13 Given this Buddhist view (and indeed on most Buddhist views), there are no substantial entities—things that have independent existence. The Buddha himself understood the world to be one of transiency, and this is because all discernable entities are in fact composite; and all is involved in the fluidity of universal change. Such unstable “realities” cannot be ultimately real. In fact, on the Buddhist account there is neither Atman nor Brahman, there is no-self but Anatman, which means no-self. Every (apparent) thing—planets, mountains, animals, persons, and so on—are in fact abstractions of events or processes, events or processes that are dependent on other events or processes. Even though there appears to be stable and substantial realities, this appearance comes from abstracting the various experiences had and then mentally reifying substantial entities, including the self. But these are merely processes. In fact, all is in flux. In addition, all events and processes originate out of a self-sustaining causal nexus in which each link arises from another, which Buddhists call the doctrine of interdependent arising (pratityasumutpada). All events and processes are connected to other events and processes. Nothing in the nexus is independent; everything arises from something else. Karma is one of the causes in the nexus of interdependent arising. Because of ignorance (avidya), we continue to experience the effects

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of karma, and this keeps us within the cycle of cause and effect, death, suffering, and rebirth. In order to escape the illusory world of permanence, as Nagarjuna explains it, we need to recognize sunyata, and so come to see that there are no finite or infinite substances—no individual or permanent selves or beings. It is in this enlightened state that we can ultimately break through the illusion of the phenomenal world, escaping the cycle of death and rebirth and experiencing nirvana, the final extinction of ego and personal desire and an indescribable state of ultimate bliss. The Buddhist doctrines of sunyata and Anatman are not readily apparent to human experience. Why is this so? The notions of emptiness, no-self, and the interconnectedness of all things are so distant from our common experience and understanding because we are in need of enlightenment. For Buddhism, the path to enlightenment, or nirvana, is the discovery, understanding, and practice of the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. The Four Noble Truths are these: 1 The existence of suffering (dukha)—life is suffering; 2 The arising of suffering (samudaya)—the cause of suffering is attachment and selfish desire; 3 The cessation of suffering (nirodha)—the path out of suffering is the cessation of attachment and selfish desire; 4 The way of cessation (marga)—the path for achieving the cessation of attachment and selfish desire is the Noble Eightfold Path. There is a progression here. First is the understanding that in the continuous cycle of life and death, there is suffering; living entails suffering. The reason for this suffering is us—our inappropriate desires and cravings and attachments. But we need not be relegated

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to this life of suffering forever; there is a way of escape. This way is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path: 1 Right views—understanding Buddhist doctrines such as Anatman, interdependent arising, and the Four Noble Truths; 2 Right resolve—resolving to renounce the world and to act with charity toward all; 3 Right speech—speaking the truth with kindness and respect; 4 Right conduct—acting according to moral principles; 5 Right livelihood—living in a way that does no harm to anyone or anything; 6 Right effort—attempting to live a noble life and to avoid an ignoble life; 7 Right mindfulness—attending to wholesome thoughts; compassion toward all; 8 Right meditation—focused concentration on the Eightfold Path and the unity of all life. The Eightfold Path can be divided into three central elements that must be practiced: acquiring wisdom (1 and 2), acting morally (3, 4, and 5), and engaging in proper meditation (6, 7, and 8). By following the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, we can eventually reach a state of enlightenment in which we recognize the impermanence of all, the pointlessness of inappropriate desire of the impermanent, including the apparent self, and ultimately reach nirvana, a state of ultimate perfection and highest good—a place where evil and suffering do not dwell. A question that often arises is how rebirth makes sense within a Buddhist doctrine of no-self. There is considerable debate among Buddhist scholars on this subject, but one common answer is that at

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the death of consciousness (or the dissolution of the skandhas, which are mental events or bundles14), a new consciousness arises, which is rebirth. This new consciousness is not identical to the former, but neither is it completely different from it. There is a causal connection between consciousnesses as they form a part of the same causal continuum. In an attempt to illustrate the coherence of Buddhist noself and rebirth to the Greek King of northwest India, the Buddhist monk Nagasena offered the following analogy: “Reverend Nagasena,” said the King, “is it true that nothing transmigrates, and yet there is rebirth?” “Yes, your majesty.” “How can this be? . . . Give me an illustration.” “Suppose, your majesty, a man lights one lamp from another— does the one lamp transmigrate to another?” “No, your Reverence.” “So there is rebirth without anything transmigrating!”15 So there need not be a substantial self in order for rebirth to occur. Again, the reason for the widespread belief in an individual substantial self is ignorance (avidya). In most Buddhist accounts, in order to move beyond ignorance and to experience enlightenment, one must fully come to have right views, including the central claim of the no-self. Embracing this teaching is not easy, Buddhists admit, and may require working off the negative effects of karma. It will likely require many rebirths to reach full enlightenment. But it is worth the effort, for contrary to some caricatures of the Buddhist understanding of suffering that see life as a tragedy of never-ending misery, in fact this teaching offers just the opposite end. Buddhists see their view of no-self and the renunciation of craving and inappropriate desire as the elimination of suffering and as leading to an experience of

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optimism and hopefulness. For what awaits the enlightened ones is the eternal bliss of nirvana.

Objections to Karma and Rebirth Belief in the doctrines of karma and rebirth is on the rise in West. Perhaps one reason for this is that it seems, at first glance, to offer a powerful solution to the problem of evil. Arthur Herman, in his classic work, The Problem of Evil and Indian Thought, claims that the karma/rebirth explanation is not only superior to Western attempts to solve the problem of evil, but that it provides such a satisfactory answer that Indian thinkers were not terribly interested in pursuing it further: Since the rebirth solution is adequate for solving the theological problem of evil, this undoubtedly explains why the problem was never of much concern to the classical Indian, and why theodicy, as a philosophical way of life, was practically unknown to them.16 This is, in my estimation, overstating the case as the Indian traditions are rife with theodicy myths and include philosophical arguments in response to evil as well. Beyond what the traditions affirm on the subject, in any case, we must ask whether karma does provide a satisfactory explanation of evil. There are a number of objections that have been raised against the doctrines of karma and rebirth. For one, it has been questioned whether they actually offer a plausible explanation for the inequalities found in this life. According to the karmic law of cause and effect, my present life circumstances are explained by my actions in a previous life, my life circumstances in that life are explained by my life

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circumstances in a life previous to that one. And so on indefinitely, as depicted in the box below. …→a→b→c→d→e→f→g→… The letters a, b, c, and so on, represent the life circumstances of a particular individual; the arrows represent the causal flow of circumstances from one’s previous life to the next.

There are two problems here. First, the solution hoped for regarding inequalities seems never to come to resolution. Unless a person is perfect in some future life, there will always be more bad karma being transported into the future. Hinduism and Buddhism do provide answers for escaping this cycle: enlightenment. So perhaps this is not an unsolvable problem. Another aspect of the problem though, is that in explaining one’s current life conditions, karma refers to actions that were made in this and a previous life. And in explaining the conditions one had in that life, karma refers to actions that were made in a life before that, and so on ad infinitum. So how did it all begin? What was the initial wrongdoing that started the karmic process itself? There is no answer to this question, and so in one sense there seems to be no ultimate solution to the problem of evil. A reply often given to this objection is that the process has no beginning—it is an eternal one. Is this a reasonable reply? It seems not, and for a number of reasons. For one, the current received view of the universe is that it originated at a finite time in the past, some thirteen billion years ago. So it is not eternal, as entailed by the karmic account. It had a beginning. If this is the case, karma too must have had a beginning. So who is responsible for the first evil? Again, no answer is forthcoming. In contrast, there are multiverse theories of the universe in which our physical universe is not alone. In that case, perhaps the karmic law transcends this universe and never did have

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a beginning after all. But if karma goes back into the infinite past, it seems that there was no beginning, and thus there was no moral clean slate to begin with; we were all slated with bad karma eternally into the past. Does pushing the solution to a problem into the infinite past really provide an ultimate solution? Perhaps we shouldn’t seek such a solution. Maybe in answering the question of why a person suffers it is sufficient to conclude that his or her actions in this and previous lives are the cause, and pushing for an ultimate explanation is unwarranted. Another problem with the karma/rebirth solution to evil and suffering is that it does not really seem fair that when a person who has lived a long life dies and is reincarnated, she must start all over again as a baby with her maturity, life experiences, wisdom, and memories completely (or virtually completely) gone. This raises a host of difficulties. Perhaps one of the more glaring difficulties is that by not remembering the wrongs that I committed in a previous life, how am I supposed to grow morally in this life? Would it not be morally advantageous for all of those memories and developments, or at least some of them, to be kept intact? The problem is especially acute for the Buddhist since, as we saw, according to the Buddhist account there is no continuous substantial self that is reborn from a previous life. But if there is no previously existing substantial self—an individual with dispositions, desires, will, memory, and so forth— then in what sense am “I” receiving rewards or punishments from actions in “my” previous life? However, as philosopher of religion John Hick argues, perhaps conscious memory is not a necessary feature for spiritual progress. Here are his words: But is conscious memory necessary to moral/spiritual progress from life to life? It seems that the “Eastern” belief in unconscious

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storing of the memory of previous lives would suffice, providing that this memory is in principle retrievable, and providing that there is an unconscious continuant which carries forward any moral/spiritual increment, or deterioration, to the next life. We might call this the soul or spirit, but these words can carry unwanted connotations, so let us, more cumbersomely, call it the dispositional continuant. This next life will not, then, be a reincarnation of the present conscious self, but a new personality formed by all the genetic and environmental circumstances which makes each of us the unique individual that we are, but embodying the dispositional continuant at the basis of this new individual.17 This position seems to apply to either a Hindu notion of the self as a disembodied substantial soul or to the Buddhist notion of the noself. Whether there is such a dispositional continuant is, of course, a matter of philosophical and scientific debate. Another difficulty for the karma/rebirth solution has to do with free will. As noted earlier, a benefit of the karma/rebirth solution to the problem of evil is that real moral agency is preserved. In fact, moral agency is central to the solution: the moral choices that we make (self-)determine our future experiences. We are responsible for our own destiny; we are the captains of our own fate. Upon further inspection, however, the view seems to run contrary to free moral agency. Consider the example raised in the previous chapter of murderer Ted Bundy. Suppose Bundy is thinking about his life as a murderer and is considering turning over a new leaf by turning himself in to the authorities and receiving the consequences of his actions. But just as he is pondering this possibility, a women strolls by his house and his mad and uncontrollable lust for rape and murder begins to burn within him. He now has the choice to continue down the path of destruction or put a stop to all of it. If he decides to attack

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the woman, and does so, then on the karmic account it seems that the woman was not completely innocent after all. She is paying the price for her former evil actions. In that case, Bundy is apparently not truly free to act as he does, for he is simply following mechanistically the effects of karmic justice. He is merely the instrumental means for meting out the justice requisite for this woman’s previous sins. If, however, the woman does not deserve such moral recompense, then karmic justice will ensure that she does not receive it. In that case, Bundy will be unable to attack her. The question that arises is this: Where is the moral freedom in this system? If on the one hand Bundy is deterministically carrying out justice, then it seems that he is not truly a free moral agent after all. He is simply a cog in the karmic justice machine. Furthermore, it is troubling to affirm a moral system in which we understand raped and murdered people to be themselves morally culpable for such acts of brutality. On the other hand, suppose Bundy really was free to attack the woman. If the woman was not deserving of such an act (which no person is, of course, deserving of such brutality), this would seem to be a serious violation of the law of karma whereby suffering occurs because of one’s previous evil actions. If in attempting to justify such actions, the defender of the karmic system replied that the woman would in a future life receive a reward for such a morally gratuitous act, this does not appear to be consistent with karma. For this would run counter to the central principle of karma in which evil and suffering are the effects of one’s previous deeds. Is there a plausible reply to this criticism? That depends on which version of karma one affirms. As per a more fatalistic version, the suffering caused by the rape would be payback for the victim’s past misdeeds, for all events that affect living beings are brought about by karma. However, on a nonfatalistic version (most Buddhist versions

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tend to be less fatalistic), some events are brought about by one’s karma and others are purely natural events and not punishment for bad karma. So in that case, the criticism would not apply. One final difficulty for the karma/rebirth solution has to do with verifiability. It seems that there is no way to verify, or falsify, the doctrine. Back to the Ted Bundy example. If Bundy murders the woman, the murder was perhaps the effect of karmic law. If he decides not to murder the woman, that too was perhaps the effect of karmic law. No matter what happens, the event is taken to perhaps be the effect of karma. There is no way to verify it empirically, even though the very processes of which it is constituted—cause (the choices one makes) and effect (the suffering or pleasure one experiences)—are understood empirically. We have an empirical system that cannot be empirically verified. What makes this problem especially trenchant for karma/rebirth is that there is no way to challenge its moral ramifications. As one commentator puts it: “Human fallibility being what it is, the idea that all suffering is due to a previous wrongful action provides a great temptation to rationalize the status quo with reference to unverifiable claims about one’s past wrongs.”18 Two quick replies. First, while the processes are empirical in a sense, there is no empirical way to trace the causes and effects. But this does not strike me as a valid criticism, for no moral system can be empirically verified. This criticism seems to demand too much. Second, while the temptation to rationalize the status quo may well apply to the fatalistic versions of karmic law, this does not seem to follow for nonfatalistic versions. We have been examining arguments for and against the karma/ rebirth solution to evil. But many Indian thinkers reject the very notion of a rational account of such things and maintain that the highest knowledge is ultimately beyond human reason. In that case, perhaps karma and rebirth should not be understood as actual events

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in which moral calculations are literally preserved from one life to the next, but rather as metaphorical or symbolical stories reflecting deeper moral and spiritual truths. Maybe what we have with karma/ rebirth is a mythical attempt to probe the unfathomable mysteries of a complex and, from a rational perspective, incomprehensible universe.

Concluding Reflections All religious traditions struggle with theoretical problems raised by evil, pain, and suffering. The ways they understand the nature of evil, and the problems raised by it, vary among the traditions. Whereas the theistic traditions generally struggle with wondering why God would create a world with evil, and what can be learned from such a God and such a world, the Indian traditions proffer the law of karma and rebirth as a way of accounting for the pain and suffering we experience (or at least appear to experience). The theist might ask the Hindu or Buddhist this question: Where is the grace? The Hindu or Buddhist might ask the theist this question: Where is the justice? Each of the traditions has some helpful insights to offer, and each of them have challenges to be overcome. Overcoming evil. That is the theme of the next and final chapter.

For Further Reading Bowker, John. 1970. Problems of Suffering in the Religions of the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A rigorous study of evil among the great religions in the Eastern and Western traditions.) Flood, Gavin. 1996. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (An accessible and authoritative presentation of Hinduism.) Herman, Arthur. 1976. The Problem of Evil in Indian Thought. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. (A classic work on evil, karma, and rebirth.)

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Kaufman, Whitley R. P. 2008. “Karma, Rebirth, and the Problem of Evil.” In Andrew Eshleman (ed.), Readings in Philosophy of Religion: East Meets West. Oxford: Blackwell. (Argues that karma is unsuccessful as a theodicy on a rationalistic account and suggests that a mystical interpretation may be a better way to understand it.) Minor, Robert. 1986. “In Defense of Karma and Rebirth: Evolutionary Karma.” In Ronald Neufeldt (ed.), Karma and Rebirth. Albany: State University of New York Press. (As the title indicates, a defense of the karma/rebirth solution.) Reichenbach, Bruce. 1990. The Law of Karma: A Philosophical Study. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (An examination of the law of karma by an analytic philosopher.) Smith, Huston. 1991. The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions. New York: HarperSanFrancisco. (A contemporary classic on the major world religions; includes reflections on evil and suffering in the various traditions.)

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9 Eternal Goods and the Triumph over Evil Theology without practice is the theology of demons. —ST. MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR1

Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU2

In Chapters 3 through 6 we examined various theistic attempts at making sense of evil, given the existence of God, and these included the role of life after death in developing theodicy. In the last chapter we investigated karma and rebirth as being central to Hindu and Buddhist understandings of the self, ultimate reality, and suffering. There, too, the afterlife (sometimes many afterlives) was of central concern. In this final chapter we first return to the notion of an afterlife within a particular theistic framework, noting certain types of evils and goods that are especially significant for theism. We then wrap up the chapter, and the book, by emphasizing the importance of a nontheoretical dimension of the issue: confronting head on the evils we face in our world.

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Horrendous Evil and Eternal Goods We already explored several theodicies. They were, to use a term from philosopher Marilyn Adams, global theodicies (not to be confused with the term “global theodicy” as used in Chapter 4). That is, they were theodicies that include the assumption that in answering the problem of evil, there must be goods that both theists and nontheists affirm. With some exceptions, as we saw, these goods tend to be finite and secular. Adams, widely recognized as one of the leading thinkers on evil in recent decades, argues that a shift must occur from the global to the individual level, particularly when dealing with evils of a certain sort—what she call “horrendous evils.” Horrendous evils may be either moral evils, such as the Holocaust, or natural evils, such as the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. But they are evils that are so destructive in an individual’s life that her or his life is no longer a great good to the person. She offers the following as paradigmatic examples of such evils: The rape of a woman and axing off her arms, psychophysical torture whose ultimate goal is the disintegration of personality, betrayal of one’s deepest loyalties, cannibalizing one’s own offspring, child abuse of the sort described by Ivan Karamazov, child pornography, parental incest, slow death by starvation, participation in the Nazi death camps, the explosion of nuclear bombs over populated areas, having to choose between which of one’s children shall live and which be executed by terrorists, being the accidental and/or unwitting agent of the disfigurement or death of those one loves best.3 When dealing with horrors of this sort, Adams argues, what are needed are not secular, finite goods, but sacred, eternal ones. She

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maintains that an approach in which a general reason is offered to cover all forms of evil does not provide the kind of help we need. For example, is the following really an acceptable reply to the horror of a parent discovering that her daughter was raped and murdered: “This was the price God was willing to pay for the world in which we live— one which has the best balance of moral good over evil.” Adams doesn’t think so. As a philosopher within a particular religious tradition (she was an Anglican Christian), she believes a more adequate response can be provided involving the coexistence of God and the evils in the world. Instead of focusing on the possible reasons why God might allow evils of this sort, she argues that it is enough to show how God can be good and yet permit their existence. On her account, as we will see, there is good reason to believe that all evils will ultimately be defeated in one’s life; that in the future, the eschaton, God will ultimately engulf and defeat all personal horrors. Before turning to Adams’ insights, let’s first look at another thinker who also provides provocative fodder for dealing with some of the worst sorts of evil. Simone Weil was a French philosopher, mystic, and social and political activist of the early twentieth century. She was an original thinker, a political anarchist, and a Christian mystic. T. S. Eliot referred to her as “a woman of genius . . . akin to that of the saints.” She had a religious experience in 1938 and thereafter developed a mystical philosophy, combining elements of Platonism with Hindu and Christian imagery. She felt the evils of the world deeply, sometimes weeping at the awareness of the suffering of fellow human beings. But she also maintained that individual suffering need not be pointless. She reflected on malheur, commonly translated as “affliction” in English translations of her writings, as a type of suffering that crushes or degrades a person. For a devoted theist, affliction poses a real problem:

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The great enigma of human life is not suffering but affliction. It is not surprising that the innocent are killed, tortured, driven from their country, made destitute or reduced to slavery, put into concentration camps or prison cells, since they are criminals who perform such actions. It is not surprising either that disease is the cause of long sufferings, which paralyse life and make it into an image of death, since nature is at the mercy of the blind play of mechanical necessities. But it is surprising that God should have given affliction the power to seize the very soul of the innocent and to possess them as sovereign master.4 One of the worst forms of evil, notes Weil, occurs when such events lead the victim, instead of the criminal, to feel scorn, disgust, or defilement. At first glance, affliction, as described by Weil, is perplexing for one who believes in a loving, compassionate, and caring God. But it is here that she attempts to turn the problem on its head. For in affliction, she claims, one can actually be brought closer to God in recognizing one’s own powerlessness. In fact, in this kind of suffering we can experience a unique point of contact with God—the most perfect encounter with love possible in this life. Just as Jesus finally experienced the gracious presence of God in his passion, in suffering we can do likewise. In the passion of the cross—horrible torture and crucifixion—Jesus was at first constrained to believe he was forsaken by the Father, and then cried out asking why God had forsaken him. But in the end Jesus surrendered fully to the Father, and in the surrendering found deep and divine resources for overcoming his suffering. In suffering, he found the Father. So too for us, she argues. In this surrendering of the will to God in the midst of affliction—a surrendering of selfishness and egocentricity—we can be brought in touch with the selfless and magnanimous creator and there receive a revelation of the beauty of God and the world.

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Weil does not claim that God creates suffering for us or, like a grand egotistical attention seeker, secretly desires that we suffer in order to focus attention on him. To the contrary, “God created through love and for love,” she says. In affliction, we are at once both at the greatest distance from God but also potentially as close as possible. The choice is ours—whether we receive the invitation of closeness, and so receive the amazing goods offered by God, or reject that invitation and so experience hell on earth. It is up to us. Using the language of Adams, this touch of God in affliction that Weil describes is not a secular, finite good, but a sacred, eternal one. This brings us back to Adams, then, who maintains that within the theistic traditions, eternal goods of this sort are in fact available. She argues that we must move beyond generic solutions to the problem of evil and look, as Weil has done, to the resources within the particular religious traditions for answers. Finally, struggling with the problem of entrenched horrors has driven me to intentionally begin to kick down the dividing wall of hostility that some have erected between philosophical and Biblical theology. Philosophers have tended to exclude appeals to the Bible on the above mentioned epistemological grounds— that it is a piece of revelation whose contents are not generally conceded to be true. Against this, I have maintained that the lack of self-evidence of widespread consensus about truth does not automatically undermine its relevance for exhibiting internal coherence and explanatory power.5 Adams insists that God will ensure that every human’s life is a great good to him or her, even if they have experienced horrors. In doing so she draws on religious value theory rooted in her own tradition. She believes horrendous evils cannot be offset by mere non-transcendent goods such as sensory pleasures, but they can be

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offset by other sorts of goods. For one, the possibility of an intimate, loving, eternal relationship with God may well be a good that is infinite and incomparable with any other kind of good. “If Divine Goodness is infinite,” says Adams, “if infinite relation to It is thus incommensurately good for created persons, then we have identified a good big enough to defeat horrors in every case.”6 The eternal presence of God with one would thus engulf all the horrors a person could experience in a lifetime. But she doesn’t leave it at that; she thinks God goes even further beyond engulfing horrors to actually defeating them. How so? By integrating the evils one has experienced into one’s personal relationship with God. She identifies three possible modes of integration. First, one can identify with the sufferings of Christ. In the Incarnation, God the Son participated in horrendous evil through his passion and death, and our experiences of pain and suffering can be a way of identifying with the suffering God-man. This is precisely the condition for which many Christian saints and mystics have prayed.7 Second, one can experience divine gratitude. In her sixth vision, mystic Julian of Norwich describes a heavenly welcome in which God thanks those who experienced evil during their earthly lives: “I thank you for your suffering,” says God, “especially in your youth.”8 Julian claims that this experience of divine gratitude will be so glorious that it will fill one’s soul, and the experience will be far beyond any merit of such suffering. Third, one can identify temporal suffering with a vision of the inner life of God. Contrary to the thinking of medieval theologians, it could well be that God is passible; that is, God is not a detached observer, an unmoved mover, a great cosmic stare, but rather is deeply moved by evil and incensed by injustice. Perhaps our deepest pain and suffering is in some sense a vision of God’s own inner life and experience. If this is so, and if a vision of God or the heart of

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God is a very great good, then evil and suffering, no matter how horrendous, could be understood to have a good dimension to them. For example, consider God’s apparent silence in the Japanese Christians’ experience of persecution as described in Endo’s novel, Silence (I referred to this in Chapter 4). Near the end of the book, after the priest has undergone terrible persecution, the silence of God is broken through an encounter he has with the risen Christ when he says, “Lord, I resented your silence.” Christ’s reply: “I was not silent. I suffered beside you.” Alvin Plantinga concurs with this understanding of God’s suffering with us: As the Christian sees things, God does not stand idly by, coolly observing the suffering of his creatures. He enters into and shares our suffering. He endures the anguish of seeing his son, the second person of the Trinity, consigned to the bitter, cruel and shameful death on the cross. Some theologians claim that God cannot suffer. I believe they are wrong. God’s capacity for suffering, I believe, is proportional to his greatness; it exceeds our capacity for suffering in the same measure as his capacity for knowledge exceeds ours. Christ was prepared to endure the agonies of hell itself; and God, the Lord of the universe, was prepared to endure the suffering consequent upon his son’s humiliation and death. He was prepared to accept this suffering in order to overcome sin, and death, and the evils that afflict our world, and to confer on us a life more glorious than we can imagine.9 With these sorts of integrations in play, Adams argues, human beings—even those who have experienced the most horrific evils imaginable—will ultimately experience redemption and be able to find that their lives are in fact filled with meaning and great good. On the Christian account she espouses, the ultimate resolution of evil is rooted in Christ for he, as God incarnate, triumphed over evil in

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the resurrection and makes resurrection life possible for all human beings. She thus concurs with the Apostle Paul who understood, via the resurrection, that the evils experienced in this life are only “slight momentary afflictions” as compared to the “eternal weight of glory beyond all measure” awaiting the consummation of all things (2 Cor. 4:17–18). Suffering cannot be divorced from the afterlife. Another Christian thinker, Alister McGrath, agrees on this point: “Suffering is part of a greater whole. It is the link between our present state of lowliness and our future state of glory. Theology allows us to see suffering as a window into the presence of God. We see through it and beyond it, and catch a glimpse of the glory and presence of God which lies through its gateway. It cannot be avoided, but it need not be feared.”10 Unlike generic theism’s view, then, as per this particular religious account, the hope in life immortal is not an ad hoc solution. The idea that God defeated evil and death through Christ is foundational to the tradition itself, and it provides opportunity for future goods that exceed human comprehension. For theists who do not embrace Adams’s specifically Christian tradition, at first glance her account may not seem at all credible. However, her shifting of the discussion of theodicy from general to individual goods may still be embraced by theists of other religious traditions. In those cases, the issue would be whether those particular traditions could provide the material requisite for offsetting or defeating horrors. Since the sacred scriptures of the Abrahamic traditions include belief in the afterlife, there is the possibility of the existence of many sorts of eternal goods, including goods that may be far superior to what we experience in the here and now. So in each of these traditions we have at hand possible ways of offsetting or even defeating evil. The theodicies presented in Chapters 3 and 4 entailed an afterlife. But is the notion of an afterlife plausible, or is it a mere pipe dream?

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Is the notion of life after death even coherent? Is it reasonable to believe in conscious existence after our brains and bodies have ceased functioning? These are the questions we tackle in the next section.

Evil and the Afterlife To begin, there are in fact a number of arguments that have been put forth in defense of the afterlife. One type of argument pertains to a dualist view of the self. Many people in the Abrahamic faiths have been dualists as the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an all seem to affirm the reality of both body and soul. Even within some Eastern religions, such as in certain forms of Hinduism, some conceptions of the self entail a distinction between the individual soul (atman) and the physical matter (prakriti). This is the case not only for religious adherents, but also for a large number of the major philosophers in the West, including Plato, Aquinas, and Descartes, who affirmed some version of dualism. This is important in that most dualists’ views of life after death involve a self with a continued consciousness after this present physical life has ended. Since the self does not cease to exist at one’s physical death on this view, good and evil and their ramifications are not limited to this present life. Let us look briefly at some arguments for dualism. One argument begins by recognizing a distinction between physical events and mental events. Suppose you have a thought about your favorite dessert. Does this thought have weight, or shape, or size? This question seems misplaced, for thoughts do not seem to be describable in terms of physics, chemistry, and biology. The parts of the brain correlated with your thought of dessert can be described in terms of physics, chemistry, and biology. The various parts of the brain do have weight and shape and size. Thus, the argument goes, mental events (thoughts) and parts

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of brains (matter) are distinct; one is physical and the other is not. So, the argument concludes, this distinction between the mental and the physical is most reasonably explained, given dualism.11 Another argument stems from personal identity. Consider the following scenario. Suppose your automobile is beginning to rust and you take it to an auto-body shop for an estimate. The repair person mentions that it will take four weeks for the repair. Now suppose you decide to move forward with getting it repaired. When you return a month later, you discover that the repair person has gone beyond merely fixing the rust and actually replaced every single part of the automobile with a new part—fenders, tires, engine, everything! Would this still be the same vehicle you brought in four weeks prior? I think we could reasonably agree that it is not. (If you doubt this, just imagine that the original parts of your automobile were kept and put back together; now there are two automobiles.) In fact, we could argue that even if just one part had been replaced it would not literally be the same automobile; it would be similar, perhaps even indistinguishable from the earlier one, but not identical to it. That’s because your automobile just is the material parts that make it up. So, the argument goes, when it comes to strictly physical objects like automobiles, a change of parts (and especially essential parts) entails a change of identity. But what about human persons? If our “parts” change, are we still the same person? In one sense, all our “parts” have changed since all, or at least most all, of the cells in the human body are regenerated/ replaced roughly every seven years. Nevertheless, we are actually the same individual we were at birth, as toddlers, adolescents, and young adults. When I look at a childhood photo, I see myself, not someone else. Many dualists argue that we maintain our identity through change not because our parts are the same (because they are not), but because our essence—what it is to be me—remains constant throughout our

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lives. Our bodies change, but we are still the same person. Whatever that essence is (some maintain that it is a substantial soul), dualists argue that it cannot be physical, for all our physical parts change, if not at the cellular level then certainly at the quantum level. There are responses to these arguments, of course, but if something akin to dualism is an accurate depiction of the self, then an afterlife is a real possibility. Even if dualism is false (many theists are not dualists), this is not the only way for a theist to conceive of life after death. If a person just is her physical parts, and if God exists, could not God recreate the person utilizing that same arrangement of parts in the future? This seems entirely plausible. In any case, if God exists, whether human persons consist of body and soul or body alone, the possibility of an afterlife seems eminently feasible. In addition to arguments for dualism, other evidences have been offered for life after death. In the previous chapter, mention was made of the alleged evidence for reincarnation. Here are three more kinds of evidences briefly sketched. Near-death experiences. Near-death experiences (NDEs) have allegedly happened to thousands or perhaps millions of people.12 They are common patterns of events associated with impending death, including sensations such as fear, serenity, the presence of light, traveling through a tunnel, a heightened spiritual awareness, leaving the body and looking down on it, and meeting other deceased persons or supernatural beings. NDEs are experienced by both religious adherents and nonreligious persons. One famous atheist, A. J. Ayer, had such an experience, which he describes this way: “My recent [near-death] experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be.”13 Perhaps unsurprisingly, most people who have had an NDE concluded that there is life after death, based on what they saw

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or felt.14 No doubt these experiences could be hallucinations or delusions, but the following elements of the experiences lend some support to their being veridical indications of life beyond death: 1) they are widely experienced by persons from diverse backgrounds and belief systems; 2) there are common characteristics to the experiences, as noted above; and 3) the experiences are sometimes quite specific with information apparently otherwise unavailable to the person (such as locating objects in the room during surgery that were not present while the patient was alive/awake, or describing an event in another location that occurred during surgery, etc.), though such data is questionable. While the evidence for NDEs is certainly not conclusive, such experiences provide some warrant for the belief in conscious awareness beyond the death of the physical body. The nature of God. For most theists, God is understood to be infinitely good, loving, wise, and just. God is not the kind of being who would create persons with the longings and aspirations for immortality that most of us have (pace A. J. Ayer), and then let those desires go forever unsatisfied. So, the argument goes, we can be confident in an afterlife; God will make sure of it. Not only that, but since God loves all persons with a perfect love, he would not want us to cease existing. Just as we dread the death of a friend and long to be with them again after they are gone, so too God, it seems, would desire to be with us forever. God will ensure our existence beyond the grave. A moral argument. One of the great philosophers of the modern period was Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant is famous for a number of philosophical insights, including an argument from morality to immortality. He argued that the integrity of the moral law requires that justice ultimately triumph—that the very nature of the moral law necessitates this. But justice does not always triumph in

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this life, so there must of necessity be an afterlife where justice will be perfectly apportioned. (Incidentally, Kant also believed that this argument could be utilized to support belief in a morally perfect God who ensures the triumph of justice and good over evil.) There are replies to each of these arguments, of course, and there are many other sorts of arguments for life after death, but exploring them here would take us afield from our primary emphasis. Suffice it to say that if life after death is a reasonable possibility, which it certainly seems to be, given theism, then there are further goods available beyond what Adams was suggesting when considering problems of evil. What kinds of goods? It’s not that, given there is life after death, the evils that occurred in this life turn out to be good. Evil is evil. But an afterlife does allow for the possibility of vindication for the evils experienced in this life. For example, while goods are no doubt lost in the rape and murder of someone, if there were no afterlife such acts of horror would certainly be worse than if the person continues to exist after death, especially if the person experiences the kind of eternal bliss expressed in the religious traditions. A life spent in a paradiselike eternity with God and friends and never-ending joy, say, would certainly affect how one perceives the evil that occurred in her life prior to death. While that would not take that evil away, it may make it bearable, perhaps even in some cases desired. Furthermore, there are endless conceivable goods that could arise in an eternal life. The ability to forgive others who harmed one, to love both friends and former foes, to give of oneself to others in charity, to bless others, promote and encourage them, and to experience all of this from others entails further goods that an afterlife could make available. Given the prospect of immortality, then, the goods that are possible might well vindicate the evils experienced in life before life after death.

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Confronting Evil Throughout this chapter and indeed this book we have focused on making sense of evil in our world. As was noted in the first chapter, the practical dimension of evil is important, too. In fact, in bringing this book to a close, it would be tragic if something wasn’t mentioned about actually responding to evil. The great French existentialist Albert Camus raised an important issue regarding this point. In The Plague, a novel written soon after the end of World War II, Camus offers an allegory of sorts for the scenarios in France and other European countries during the German occupation. Focusing on the town of Oran as the setting to represent this broader occupation, he presents it as being isolated from the world due to an outbreak of the bubonic plague (an allegory of Nazi evil). Early on, the citizens are unwilling to see the plague for what it truly is, and shrug it off as just another illness. But as time goes on, some of them, including Dr. Rieux—a central figure in the book—sees the plague for what it is and fights it with all the vim and vigor he can muster. But the question arises in the midst of this battle: If there is a divinity in control of the natural world, when we fight the plague are we actually fighting against God? Rieux muses: “Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn’t it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes toward the heavens where He sits in silence?” (Camus, The Plague, 117). Camus’s message is clear. We won’t have sufficient intellectual answers for evil, but it will confront us nonetheless. We just need to decide how to respond to it. Whether we believe that God exists or not, we need to act against the evils that befall us and our world rather than merely relying on God to always take care of them. Camus has

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a point. Whatever one’s worldview, evil confronts humanity. Whether God exists or not, and whatever reasons there may be for the evils that exist, we have a moral responsibility to act—to confront them and strive for their elimination. Even the providence of God does not negate human responsibility. Whatever explanations there may be for evil, it is still evil; pain and suffering are real. Even if we have philosophical accounts for why they might exist, that does not deal with the reality of pain and suffering. As Eleonore Stump wisely counsels, It would be obtuse to fail to see that, no matter how successful a theodicy is, it cannot possibly alter the fact of suffering. Whatever justification for suffering theodicy finds, it remains a justification for suffering. To explain suffering is not to explain it away; the suffering remains and the grief over it ought also to remain, no matter how successful the justification.15 There is a central place for careful intellectual investigations of the possible reasons for evil, but we must never lose sight of the fact that it is evil we are investigating; it is the pain and suffering of sentient creatures (among other evils) to which we’re attending, and to leave it at the level of academic abstraction would itself be an evil. As we saw Grace Jantzen point out in Chapter 1, theorizing about evil does not entail dealing with evil. So where do we go from here? For one, with Weil and Adams, we can carefully attend to the suffering of our fellow living creatures; we can grieve about it. This attention should also involve our thinking through, or rethinking, the evils that exist in our own attitudes and actions. Sometimes rethinking involves internal change, or repentance, and it is this “continual repentance,” says Adams, that is “the best contribution [anyone] can make toward solving the problem of evil.”16 This repentance should move us to action, for the world in

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which we live has much evil that we, like Dr. Rieux, can and should be actively fighting against. The theoretical challenges are worthy of investigation if we are to try to make sense of the world, but there is a time to disengage from theory and engage in practice. The Enlightenment philosopher and satirist François-Marie Arouet, widely known by his pen name “Voltaire,” didn’t have much use for theodicy. He surmised that to focus on theoretical issues when faced with actual evil is to misapprehend our moral obligations. As this book has demonstrated, unlike Voltaire I do believe there is a place for philosophical reflection on the nature and origins of evil and an attempt to make sense of it in the world of which we are a part. But I think Voltaire also has a legitimate point. When confronted with evil, as we are virtually every day of our lives, we should do more than philosophize about it. We must act. It seems appropriate to close this book, then, with some suggestions for confronting evil. While the opportunities are endless, here are some practical steps that could be taken in our attempt to triumph over pain and suffering: Assist refugees in their plight. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), at the time of this writing one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum.17 This is a crisis of global proportions. There are many ways we can make a difference, including hosting a refugee family, sponsoring a refugee, helping refugees integrate into our culture, holding awareness and fundraising events, and volunteering to teach a language. Help needy children by sponsoring a child or volunteering your time to an organization devoted to children. There are many trustworthy and effective organizations dedicated to helping children in need. Whether it is sponsoring a specific child financially or meeting face-toface with an at-risk student regularly in the community, involvement at this level can make a monumental difference in the life of a child.

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Battle the effects of illness and disease. One of the most staggering atrocities of the last half-century is the AIDS epidemic. Since the first cases were reported in 1981, more than twenty-five million people have died of AIDS worldwide. There are currently thirty-seven million people who are living with HIV/AIDS, and 2.5 million are under the age of 15. There is much we can do to battle this and other diseases plaguing our world. Again, giving of time and resources is an obvious and straightforward way to help. We can also donate blood, promote safe nutritional intake and sexual practices, and serve in support and awareness organizations in our local communities. Donate time by volunteering with an organization that assists the homeless. Globally, the number of homeless people is staggering. The last time a global survey was attempted, which was done by the United Nations in 2005, an estimated 100 million people were homeless worldwide, and as many as 1.6 billion people lacked adequate housing.18 There are myriad ways to help ease the burden of and give dignity to those who have experienced hardship, including volunteering at a homeless shelter, providing food and supplies to a food pantry, and donating clothes and other goods to thrift stores. Support organizations that strive to provide relief, including food and shelter, for victims of natural disasters. Global communication has opened up the world to many of us. We know almost instantly about natural disasters and catastrophes affecting people continents away. We not only have immediate knowledge of such news events, but we also have access to resources and organizations that are poised to respond. Support could involve giving financially or even providing hands-on effort in a struggling community. Promote equality at home, at the workplace, and in society at large. It is a sad state of affairs that domination, discrimination, and victimization are substantial kinds of evils in our world. This occurs with respect to race, age, religion, disability, sex, and many other

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factors. There are a number of ways to combat such evils, including becoming more aware of where this may be occurring (e.g., at the workplace), becoming more educated about those from whom we are different, and engaging in dialogue and discussion with those who disagree with us. Work toward building unity and respect among religious traditions. Intrinsic to religion is the power to build up and the power to destroy. In fact, a cursory glance at history shows that religion has the potential of great good and great evil. It is time for those within the religious traditions to lead the way in propounding peace, respect, and harmony among those both within and without their respective traditions. For example, encouraging one’s church, synagogue, mosque, or temple to proactively engage in interreligious dialogue could foster deep respect for one another, even amid real disagreement on matters of doctrine. Joint efforts to promote social justice and provide for the needy could also be fruitful ways to battle evil and promote human flourishing. Care for neglected and abused animals. There are countless animals suffering from neglect and cruelty. Consider volunteering at a pet shelter, or perhaps donating resources to a humane society, pet shelter, or rescue group. Another possibility is to adopt a pet. Plenty of animals could benefit from a caring and safe home. Strive to help the environment. There are plenty of ways to do this, including investing in alternative forms of energy, rethinking modes of transportation, conserving energy at home and at work, recycling and creating less trash, volunteering at a local organic farm, and so on. The destruction of our ecology has been a great evil, and we have it within our power to turn the tide on this matter and make our world a much greener, ecologically friendly place. These are just a few ideas for confronting evil in our world. Whatever our religious or nonreligious beliefs, ameliorating pain, suffering, and other evils and promoting human, animal, and ecological flourishing

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should be part and parcel of the activities of the human race. We should not merely leave it up to God or our fellow human beings to tackle evil. For real triumph to occur, it will require the concerted efforts—both intellectual and practical—of each and every one of us.

For Further Reading Adams, Marilyn McCord. 1991. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (An advanced philosophical work developing the ideas of horrendous evils noted above.) Badham, Paul and Linda, eds. 1987. Death and Immortality in the Religions of the World. New York: Paragon House. (A collection of works from various religions on the subject of life after death.) Bauman, Stephan, Matthew Soerens, and Issam Smeir. 2016. Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis. Chicago: Moody Publishers. (A helpful book on the refugee crisis, which spells out the plight of refugees and offers practical suggestions for making a difference.) Clayton, Philip and Steven Knapp. 2011. The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (The authors develop a version of Christian faith that preserves the tradition’s central beliefs but also examines the varying degrees of certainty with which those beliefs may still be held.) Hick, John. Death and Eternal Life. 1994. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press. (A cross-cultural study exploring the mystery of death and immortality as understood in major world religions.) Lewis, C. S. 1989. A Grief Observed. San Francisco, CA: HarperOne. (A personal and moving treatment of the problem of evil.) Noddings, Nel. 2003. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Examines the meaning of caring and how it functions in an educational context.) Stump, Eleonore. 2010. Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (A magisterial work of contemporary philosophy dealing with evil and suffering from the perspective of Christian narrative in which the author argues that suffering can be redeemed for the sufferer in a personal relationship of love.) Taliaferro, Charles. 1990. “Why We Need Immortality,” Modern Theology 6, no. (4): 367–79. (A response to Grace Jantzen’s contention that survival after death cannot be inferred from the fact that God is loving.)

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Notes

Preface to the Second Edition 1 Louis P. Pojman, How Should We Live? An Introduction to Ethics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage, 2005), xvi.

Chapter 1 1 NASA states that the probability that human activity is causing global warming is greater than 95 percent. Further, NASA notes that “Ninetyseven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.” https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/. 2 And yet, many people are either unconcerned or in denial about climate change and its effects. There are various factors that curb efforts to help stop the impending global catastrophes of global warming, including social, political, and religious ones. For example, regarding the latter, I heard one person recently say that if climate change is true, then God will soon bring about the end of the world, so there is no need to do anything about it. Evidently, he is not alone in holding a view about the end times that motivates his resistance to curbing climate change. See the following research study by David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado who reveal that belief in the biblical end times was a motivating factor behind resistance to curbing climate change: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1065912912442243.

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Notes

3 David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 106. 4 For more on worldview, see David K. Naugle, Jr., Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), and James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015). 5 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. The Fathers of the English Dominican Province, vol. 1 (New York: Benziger Bros, 1947), 137. 6 Epicurus, according to Lactantius (ca. 240–ca.320 AD) in De Ira Dei (On the Wrath of God). An online translation of the work by Philip Schaff can be found at http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0240-0320,_ Lactantius,_De_Ira_Dei_%5BSchaff%5D,_EN.pdf, page 409 in the text. 7 Some philosophers have noted that “metaphysical impossibility” is a richer notion than “logical impossibility.” Peter van Inwagen goes even farther and argues that the phrase “logical impossibility” is not meaningful. See, for example, his The Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 22–23. 8 Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 149. 9 Following common usage, the male pronoun will sometimes be used of God. This is not meant to indicate that God is male. 10 Process theologians hold to a similar view. See, for example, David Ray Griffin, “Creation out of Nothing, Creation out of Chaos, and the Problem of Evil,” in Stephen T. Davis, ed., Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 108–25. For another view that is more closely allied with traditional theism but which also limits God’s power with respect to evil, see Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp, The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) and Thomas Jay Oord, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015). 11 See, for example, a process approach in David Ray Griffin, “Creation out of Nothing, Creation out of Chaos, and the Problem of Evil,” in Stephen T. Davis, ed., Encountering Evil, and an open theist approach in William Hasker, “An Open Theist Approach,” in Chad Meister and James K. Dew, Jr., eds., God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017), 57–76.

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12 Anselm, Proslogian, in St. Anselm: Basic Writing (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1962), chapter five, 56–57. 13 Elie Wiesel, Night, New York: Hill and Wang, 1958, page 34. 14 Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977), 63–64. 15 John S. Feinberg, The Many Faces of Evil: Theological Systems and the Problem of Evil, revised and expanded edition (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 454. 16 Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, 64. 17 Grace M. Jantzen, Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), 261, 262.

Chapter 2 1 See J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind (1955), collected in The Problem of Evil, ed. Robert and Marilyn McCord Adams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 25–26. 2 Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, 30. 3 It should be noted that Plantinga includes in his argument the possibility of transworld depravity (the claim that there is at least one possible world in which a person has morally significant freedom and yet commits at least one morally wrong action) as a further supposition in order to ensure that it is logically impossible for there to be a possible world in which there is no evil. Thus, regardless of which world God has created, one or more individual persons can be counted on to actualize evil because they are suffering from transworld depravity. This move is consistent with the Christian doctrine of the Fall. 4 In fact, most theists have in fact long affirmed that there are some things that an omnipotent being cannot do. An omnipotent being cannot make logical impossibilities realities, such as creating a square circle or bringing about a being more powerful than itself. 5 J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind, Vol. LXIV, No. 254 (April 1955), 200–12.

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6 William Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979); reprinted in Chad Meister, The Philosophy of Religion Reader (London: Routledge, 2008), 523–35. Citation on page 534, note 1. 7 Paul Draper, “Arguments from Evil,” in Paul Copan and Chad Meister, eds., Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 146. 8 Ibid. 9 Graham Oppy, “Logical Arguments and Free-Will Defences,” in Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser, eds., The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 45–64. In this essay Oppy grants that there is at this time no successful argument from evil against the existence of God of which he is familiar; he argues that logical arguments are no worse off than any other logical arguments for or against the existence of God. 10 William Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” 527. 11 Ibid., 529. 12 See, for example, Stephen J. Wykstra, “The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of ‘Appearance,’” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16 (1984): 73–93. 13 For two recent arguments defending skeptical theism, see Stephen Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” in Chad Meister and James K. Dew, Jr. eds., God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017), 99–127, and Timothy Perrine and Stephen J. Wykstra, “Skeptical Theism,” in Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser, eds., The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 85–107. 14 I owe this insightful analogy to William Alston, “Some (Temporarily) Final thoughts,” in Daniel Howard-Snyder, ed., The Evidential Argument from Evil, 316–17. But the chess match between my son and me actually occurred as described. 15 William Lane Craig (in debate with Michael Tooley). Craig brought this chaos analogy to my attention in private conversation. For a fascinating introduction to the developing field of chaos theory, see James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Penguin, 1998).

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16 Paul Draper, “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists,” Noûs 23 (1989): 331–350. This brief summary of Draper’s argument does really do it justice, but space constraints do not allow it its proper due. I encourage you to read the article in full. 17 Draper, “Pain and Pleasure,” 332. 18 For a more recent argument by Draper, see “God, Evil, and the Nature of Light,” in Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser, eds., The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 65–84. It is a bit challenging to summarize it in the space allotted here. I encourage you to read the essay for yourself.

Chapter 3 1 David Hume, Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion, 2nd ed. (London: 1779), 186. 2 Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, translated by Thomas Williams (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 68–69. 3 For five different Christian views on the Fall and original sin, see J. B. Stump and Chad Meister, Original Sin and the Fall: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, forthcoming 2018). 4 For two very different accounts (one Christian and one atheistic) of this claim that there has been moral and spiritual progress, see Bradley R. E. Wright, Upside: Surprising Good News About the State of Our World (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2011), and Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011). 5 It should be noted, however, that one clever theory proposes that the sins of Adam and Eve were foreknown by God and thus the world was cursed by God because of them millions or billions of years before Adam and Eve existed. For more on this, see William Dembski, The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2009). 6 Interestingly, the creation story in the book of Genesis never claims that human beings were created perfectly good. It says they were “good,” even “very good,” but not perfect. 7 John Hick, Philosophy of Religion, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), 45–46.

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186 8 Ibid., 45.

9 Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, Revised Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 219–20. 10 John Hick, “An Irenaean Theodicy,” in Stephen T. Davis, ed., Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 48. 11 Hick, “An Irenaean Theodicy,” 38. 12 This criticism of Hick accepting the classical view of divine omnipotence is raised by David Ray Griffin in his “Critique by David Ray Griffin,” in Stephen T. Davis, ed., Encountering Evil, 54–65. Griffin’s concern has to do with the biblical doctrine of creation. Mine has more to do with divine constraints. 13 Eleonore Stump, Wandering in the Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010), 14.

Chapter 4 1 Charles Darwin, in a letter to Asa Grey, dated May 22, 1860, found in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume 8, edited by Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 275, as quoted in Keith Ward, The Big Questions in Science and Religion (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2008), 64. 2 Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks, translated by Richard Rees (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 147. 3 For an interesting attempt to reconcile belief in God and the theory of evolution, see Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins, “Evil, Creation, and Evolution,” in Chad Meister and James K. Dew, Jr. eds., God and Evil: The Case for God in a World Filled with Pain (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2013), 270–89. 4 And some have argued that it is. See, for example, Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperOne, 2010) and Michael Denton, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis (Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute, 2016). 5 Paul Draper, online book, http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_ draper/evil.html.

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6 Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995), 133. 7 For much of my thinking on the matter, I am indebted to Keith Ward, Christopher Southgate, Philip Clayton, John Polkinghorne, Richard Swinburne, John Hick, and Arthur Peacocke. Note their works listed in the footnotes and Further Reading section. 8 I am referring to God’s power as “perfect power” rather than the commonly used attribute of omnipotence. The reason for this is that the term “omnipotence” is used in different ways and with different meanings in the literature. I do not think perfect power entails the ability of do anything. One of the criticisms of Hick’s soul-making theodicy is that he seems to accept the traditional doctrine of omnipotence. See, for example, David Ray Griffin’s critique of Hick’s theodicy in Stephen T. Davis, Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, A New Edition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 52–56. 9 Arthur Peacocke, in Thomas Tracy, The God Who Acts, 139. 10 Philip Clayton makes a related point in God and Contemporary Science, 100–03 and 220–26. This type of constraint need not preclude miracles, however, for 1) God could act through the stochastic patterns of quantum mechanics or chaos theory, and 2) there may well be deeper dimensions of the divine nature functioning in the world of which we are unaware and that, as manifest in our universe, supersede what we currently take to be natural laws. Clayton himself is uncomfortable with the notion of God causing any physical events to occur, for he fears that this would be the death knell of science. But I think he is inconsistent here, for just as he grants downward causation from the mental to the physical with respect to human persons, so too it seems that he could grant a relevant form of downward causation from God to the universe—especially given his panentheistic view of the God–world relation. 11 Notably, two philosophical theologians have recently argued that God cannot directly eliminate all evil. While I agree with this general point, and many others things they argue for, I disagree with their conclusions about what God can do with regard to evil. For them, God cannot (or will not) prevent any evil act. See Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp, The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) and Thomas Jay Oord, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015).

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12 Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, translated by Bernard Frechtman (Philosophical Library, 1957), 48–49, as quoted in Louis Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006), 64. 13 Pojman, Ethics, 64. 14 For more of libertarian free will, see Richard Taylor, Metaphysics, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992), chapter five. For an advanced presentation of the subject, see Kevin Timpe, Free Will: Sourcehood and Its Alternatives (London: Continuum, 2008). 15 John Hick, “The Irenaean Theodicy,” in Stephen T. Davis, ed., Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, A New Edition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 47. 16 Ward, The Big Questions, 79–80. 17 John Stuart Mill, “Nature,” in Three Essays on Religion (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), 66. The essay may also be accessed online at https:// www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mill-john-stuart/1874/nature.htm. 18 Keith Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God (New York: Pilgrim, 1982), 201–02. 19 John Wesley in a sermon titled, “The General Deliverance,” in Sermons on Several Occasions, Vol. 2 (London: J. Kershew, 1825), 131, as quoted in Christopher Southgate, The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Pain (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 78. 20 D. Z. Phillips, “Critique by D. Z. Phillips,” in Stephen T. Davis, Encountering Evil, 58. 21 Ibid. 22 For more on this idea of God in various religious traditions, see Keith Ward, Concepts of God: Images of the Divine in Five Religious Traditions (London: Oneworld, 1998).

Chapter 5 1 This follows the approach of Stephen T. Davis in his edited work, Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, A New Edition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), xi.

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2 Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov. (ET Heinemann London 1912) Pt.2. Bk5. ch4. 3 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brother Karamazov (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1995), 225. 4 Bernard Schweizer, Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 99. 5 As quoted in Schweizer, op. cit. 99. 6 Elie Wiesel, Night, 64, as quoted in Schweizer, 155. 7 Elie Wiesel, Conversations 82, as quoted in Schweizer, 155. 8 Elie Wiesel, Conversations 89, as quoted in Schweizer, 155. 9 John K. Roth, “A Theodicy of Protest,” in Stephen T. Davis, ed., Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, A New Edition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 4. 10 Ibid., 7. 11 Ibid., 5. 12 Ibid., 11. 13 Ibid., 7. 14 Ibid., 12. 15 Zachary Braiterman, (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in ­PostHolocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 31. 16 See, for example, N. N. Trakakis’s “Anti-Theodicy,” in Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser, eds., The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 125–26. 17 Ibid., 125–26. 18 For a helpful presentation on this subject, see Toby Betenson, “AntiTheodicy” in Philosophy Compass 11/1 (2016): 56–65. 19 See D. Z. Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), chapter 3; N. N. Trakakis’s “Anti-Theodicy,” and Kenneth Surin, Theology and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). Toby Betenson has helpfully cataloged some of the criticisms in his “AntiTheodicy.”

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20 Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, 63. 21 See Phillips, “Theism without Theodicy,” in Davis (ed.), Encountering Evil, p. 148: “first bee sting.” 22 Phillips, “Theism without Theodicy,” 148. 23 Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 169, as quoted in Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, 66. 24 Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, 67. 25 W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, Collected Edition (London: Heinemenn, 1948), 62, as quoted in Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, 68. 26 Ibid., 71. 27 Trakakis, “Anti-Theodicy,” 127–31. 28 Ibid., 128–31. 29 See, for example, the Book of Job. 30 Marilyn McCord Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 3. 31 Irving Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity, and Modernity after the Holocaust,” in John K. Roth and Michael Berenbaum, eds., Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications (St. Paul: Paragon House, 1989), 315.

Chapter 6 1 Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 130. 2 Shusaku Endo, Silence (Taplinger Publishing Company, 1966), 54–55, italics added. 3 As quoted in Wesley Salmon, “Religion and Science: A New Look at Hume’s Dialogues,” Philosophical Studies 33 (1978), 176. There is some debate about whether this is precisely how Russell stated his point. Another version comes from an article Leo Rosten published in Saturday Review/World

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(dated February 23, 1974), which features an interview with Russell. There, Rosten writes: “Confronted with the Almighty, he [Russell] would ask, ‘Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?’” A copy of this article can be found at this link: http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1974feb23-00025. 4 John Schellenberg, “Does Divine Hiddenness Justify Atheism?” in Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, eds., Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 31. 5 I have conflated two version of the Divine Hiddenness Argument by John Schellenberg in his Divine Hiddeness and Human Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). 6 Stephen Maitzen has argued that the uneven demographics of theism is a phenomenon for which naturalistic explanations seem to be more promising than theistic ones. See his “Divine Hiddenness and the Demographics of Theism,” Religious Studies 42 (2006): 177–91. 7 Zora Neil Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990), 145, as quoted in Bernard Schweizer, Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 2. Schweizer makes the case that literature is the central genre of expressing animosity toward God. 8 To get a sense of how they may have experienced these horrors, the television play titled God on Trial beautifully captures the emotion and trauma experienced by Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz during World War II. 9 See, for example, James Spiegel, The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010). While I do not agree with this point in Spiegel’s book, I do think he has made a good case that there are nonrational moral and psychological dynamics that can lead to unbelief. 10 John Loftus responds to this and other points I make in response to divine hiddenness in his book, How to defend the Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist (Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing, 2015), 231–34. I appreciate his thoughtful engagements with my arguments. While I disagree with his criticisms, I think some of his concerns entail a view of God, Christian faith, and human psychology that I do not espouse. In fact, I think we may agree on more than we disagree on when it comes to the problem of divine hiddenness. In any case, due to these critiques I have modified some of my verbiage in an attempt to make my position clearer.

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11 Paul K. Moser, “Reorienting Religious Epistemology,” in James K. Beilby, ed., For Faith and Clarity: Philosophical Contributions to Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006). 12 Paul K. Moser, Why Isn’t God More Obvious? (Norcross, GA: RZIM, 2000), 6. For a more advanced presentation of Moser’s arguments on this subject, see his The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). For an even more academic presentation, see The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 13 Loftus, How to Defend the Christian Faith, 232. 14 This point of epistemic distance was an aspect of John Hicks soul-making theodicy, as noted in Chapter 3. 15 Pascal, Pensees, #430. 16 See William Lane Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers (Wheaton: Crossway, 2003), chapter 8. 17 This is the general idea of many religious inclusivists and pluralists. For more on this, see Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World, revised edition, edited by Dennis L. Okholm and Timothy R. Phillips (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998). 18 St. Teresa, The Light of Teresa of Jesus, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1960), 249. 19 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Longmans, Green, 1916). Originally published in 1902. Lecture III. 20 From Islam—Our Choice: Impressions of Eminent Converts to Islam, Karachi: Ashraf Publications, 1977, as quoted in Peter Donovan, Interpreting Religious Experience, 18. 21 Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Eastern Religions and Western Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 22. 22 C. B. Martin argues that religious experiences don’t provide justification for religious beliefs because they cannot be verified like other perceptual experiences. See his Religious Belief (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1959).

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23 For more on this point see William P. Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). 24 See, for example, Freud’s The Future of an Illusion (various publishers).

Chapter 7 1 J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind, New Series, Vol. 64, No. 254 (April 1955): 200–12. 2 A statement by Ted Bundy, paraphrased and rewritten by Harry V. Jaffa, Homosexuality and the National Law (Claremont Institute of the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, 1990), 3–4. 3 These examples come from ethicist James Rachels in his The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999), 23–24. 4 For a fair and charitable reading of Nietzsche’s ethics, see Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, eds., Reading Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). For an audio or video presentation of Nietzsche’s views on ethics and other topics, see the wonderfully crafted Great Courses course by Solomon and Higgins on Nietzsche. 5 Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, translated by Walter Kaufman (Random House, 1966), 208. 6 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), preface to 1976 edition, v. 7 Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 133. 8 Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson, “The Evolution of Ethics,” in Michael Ruse, ed., Philosophy of Biology (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 316. In Shakespeare’s tragedy, when Macbeth is about to kill King Duncan, he has a hallucination of a dagger floating in the air. 9 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 219. 10 As quoted in Robert Wright, The Moral Animal (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 327–28. 

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11 Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (New York: Free Press, 2010). It should be noted that Harris claims that his view is not a version of utilitarianism. I encourage you to look up the definition of utilitarianism in a philosophy dictionary and then carefully read Harris’s book and decide for yourself whether it is a form of utilitarianism or not. 12 This point is a bit oversimplified. There are different versions of utilitarianism, notably act and rule. The latter is often understood to be an absolute or objective or universal form of morality as it entails a rule that can be applied in all circumstances regardless of the situation. For more on utilitarianism, see William Frankena, Ethics, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs: NJ, Prentice Hall, 1973). 13 For an accessible overview of moral theories, including evaluations of each of them, see Louis P. Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006). 14 William Rowe, “Reflections on the Craig-Flew Debate,” in Stan W. Wallace, ed., Does God Exist? The Craig-Flew Debate (Burlington, VT.: Ashgate, 2003), 66. 15 Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking, 2006), 279. 16 Christopher Hitchens, “An Atheist Responds,” www.washingtonpost.com, Saturday, July 14, 2007, A17. 17 For more on this, see Paul Copan, “The Moral Argument,” in Paul Copan and Chad Meister, eds., Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 127–41. 18 William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 33. 19 Italics in original. Ibid., 34.

Chapter 8 1 While the East/West distinction is not quite accurate, I am nevertheless utilizing this common nomenclature here to abridge the discussion.

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2 There are clear exceptions to this claim. In fact, there are some very interesting Hindu approaches to theodicy. See, for example, Purushottama Bilimoria, “Toward an Indian Theodicy,” in Justin P. McBrayer and Daniel Howard-Snyder, eds., The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil (Cambridge, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 281–95. 3 For examples, see the University of Virginia Health Science Center, Division of Personality Studies website: http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/ internet/personalitystudies/case_types.cfm. 4 See, for example, Christopher M. Bache, Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life (New York: Paragon House, 1991). For more alleged evidence on life after death, see Raymond A. Moody, Jr. Life after Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon—Survival of Bodily Death (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001). 5 See Michael Sudduth, A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Arguments for Postmortem Survival (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 121–23. 6 For a helpful introduction to Hinduism, see Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 7 Shankara, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, translated by Swami Prabhavananda (Hollywood, CA: Vedanta Press, 1975), 70. 8 It is estimated that roughly three-fourths of Hindu intellectuals affirm an Absolutist view of Ultimate Reality. While it has never been very popular among the general population of Hindus, it has been influential in the history of Hindu thought. For more on this, see Arvind Sharma, “Hinduism,” in Arvind Sharma, ed., Our Religions (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 14–15. 9 Chandogya Upanisad 6.9.1-4. 10 Shankara, The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, 71–72. 11 Shankara, The Vedanta Sutras Part I: The Sacred Books of the East 34, edited by Max F. Muller (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger), 36. 12 Shankara, The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, 73–74. 13 Masao Abe, “Buddhism,” in Arvind Sharma, ed., Our Religions (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 115. 14 According to the Mahayana Buddhist view, there are five skandhas—mental events or bundles—that constitute what we often call the “ego.”

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15 Recorded in Questions of King Menander of the Pali Canon, from Milindapanha, translated by V. Trenckner (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1928), 70, as quoted in Joseph Runzo, Global Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001), 136. 16 Arthur Herman, The Problem of Evil in Indian Thought (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976), 288. 17 John Hick, The New Frontier of Religion and Science: Religious Experience, Neuroscience, and the Transcendent (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 199. 18 Whitley R. P. Kaufman, “Karma, Rebirth, and the Problem of Evil,” in Andrew Eshleman, ed., Readings in Philosophy of Religion: East Meets West (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 289.

Chapter 9 1 Maximus the Confessor, Letter 20 (P.G. 91, 601C). 2 Henry David Thoreau, The Essays of Henry David Thoreau, edited by Richard Dillman (Albany, NY: NCUP, 1990), 78. 3 Marilyn McCord Adams, “Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God,” in Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams, eds., The Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 211–12. 4 Simone Weil, “The Love of God and Affliction,” in On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 171–72. 5 Adams, Marilyn McCord. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, 1999) 207. 6 Adams, Horrendous Evils, 82–83. 7 One might think of the many early Christians who prayed to not escape the Roman persecutions. 8 Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), chapter 14, page 62. 9 Alvin Plantinga, “Self-Profile,” in Jas. Tomberlin, ed., Alvin Plantinga (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985), 36.

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10 Alister McGrath, Suffering and God (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995), 83. 11 For two important defenses of dualism, see Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Keith Ward, In Defence of the Soul (London: Oneworld, 1995). 12 In the recent classic of NDE, Life after Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon—Survival of Bodily Death (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2001), Raymond Moody examines over one hundred case studies of people who experienced “clinical death” and were subsequently revived. For more research on NDEs as providing evidence for immortality, see Gary Habermas and J. P. Moreland, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004). 13 For his autobiographical account, see A. J. Ayer, “What I Saw When I Was Dead,” National Review, October 14, 1988. 14 See Habermas and Moreland, Beyond Death. 15 Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010), 16. 16 Marilyn McCord Adams, “Redemptive Suffering: A Christian Solution to the Problem of Evil,” in Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright, eds., Rationality, Religious Belief and Moral Commitment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986); reprinted in The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings, edited by Michael L. Peterson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 179. 17 For more, go to the UN website at: http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/ latest/2015/6/558193896/worldwide-displacement-hits-all-time-highwar-persecution-increase.html. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the UN refugee agency, which is “a global organisation dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people.” 18 http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/Pages/AnnualReports.aspx and https://www.habitat.org/volunteer/build-events/world-habitat-day.

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Index Abe, Masao  148, 195 Abraham, William (Billy)  vii Abrahamic faiths  6, 8, 36, 169 Adams, Marilyn McCord  x, 18, 39, 90, 162–9, 173, 175, 183, 190, 196, 197, 198 Adams, Robert M.  18, 39, 183, 196, 198 Advaita Vedanta  143–8 afterlife  52, 55, 73, 138–43, 161, 168–9, 171–3 AIDS 177 al-Ghazali 75 Allah  6, 109 Alston, William P.  184, 193, 202 Anatman 149–51 animal suffering  30–31, 60, 70, 72, 139, 178 Anselm  12, 75, 183, 198 anti-theodicy  vii, 76, 77, 83–91, 189–90 Aquinas, Thomas  7, 75, 169, 182, 198 atheism  37, 74, 100, 115–35. See also naturalism Atman  144, 147, 149, 169 Audi, Robert  197–8, 202 Augustine  42–5, 48, 56, 185 Auschwitz  13, 53–4, 81, 84, 189, 191 Avila, St. Teresa of  108 Ayer, A. J.  171–2, 197–8

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Badham, Linda  198 Baggett, David  134, 198 Barker, David C.  181 Beilby, James  192, 201 Berenbaum, Michael  190 Betenson, Toby  76, 91, 189 Bible  34, 62, 94, 107, 165, 169 Big Bang event  65, 132 Black Plague  47, 53 Bowker, John  159, 198 Boyd, Gregory  198 Brahman  138, 144–7, 149. See also Nirguna Brahman; Saguna ­Brahman Braiterman, Zachary  84, 189 Buddha 149 Buddhism  9, 66, 137–8, 148–53 Buddhist account of evil  138–43, 148–59 Bundy, Ted  116–18, 122, 125–6, 128, 129, 133, 157, 158, 193 Burkhardt, Frederick  186 Camus, Albert  174–5 Cary, Phillip  56 chaos, theory of  35, 182, 184, 187, 199 Christianity  6, 55, 66, 95–6, 129, 138 Clayton, Philip  179, 182, 187 climate change  1, 181 Code of Hammurabi  48 Collins, Francis S.  186 Confucianism  3, 66

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208 Confucius 66 Copan, Paul  134, 194, 199 CORNEA 35 Cottingham, John  18 Craig, William Lane  35, 56, 106, 184, 192, 194, 199 crucifixion 164 Dalai Lama  129 Daoists 3 Darwin, Charles  186 Darwinism. See evolution Davis, Stephen T.  18, 56, 76, 91, 182, 186–9, 199, 201 Dawkins, Richard  60, 122–5, 133, 187, 193, 199 death  1–2, 30, 32, 58–60, 70, 72–4, 76, 81–3, 148, 150, 161–2, 166–9, 171–4, 179, 197–9 defense. See free will defense Dembski, William  185 Dennett, Daniel C.  134, 194, 199 Denton, Michael  186 Descartes, René  10, 169 deus absconditus (divine ­hiddenness)  91. See also divine hiddenness; silence of God Dew, James K.  19, 40, 56, 182, 184, 186 Dhammapada 66 Dillman, Richard  196 Discovery Institute  186 divine action  61–5, 82 divine constraints  55, 61–70, 186–7 divine hiddenness  91, 93–113, 191, 200, 203. See also deus absconditus; silence of God Donovan, Peter  192 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor  78, 189 Drange, Theodore  113, 199 Draper, Paul  vii, x, 27–8, 36, 39, 59, 184–6, 199 dualism (substance)  169–71, 197 Dugard, Jaycee  14

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Index Eightfold Path. See Noble Eightfold Path Ekanayake, Purnima  141–3 Elijah (the prophet)  107 Eliot, T. S.  163 Endo, Shusaku  95, 190 enlightenment 148–54 Epicurus  41, 182 eschatological fulfillment  70–3 Eshleman, Andrew  160, 196, 200 eternal goods  161–79 eternal life  173, 179, 199 evidential arguments from evil. See problem(s) of evil: evidential ­arguments evil. See also problem(s) of evil classification of  4–6 confronting 174–9 definition of  1–4 gratuitous  5, 32, 37–8, 54 horrendous 162–9 inscrutable 201 moral  4–5, 24, 26, 45, 64, 162 natural  5–6, 17, 26–30, 45–9, 53, 58, 69, 74–6, 86, 162, 201–2 evolution  26–9, 37–8, 47–55, 57–75, 82, 112, 121–6, 130, 133, 186 Fall, the  45–6 fallen angel, supreme. See Satan Feinberg, John S.  18, 39, 183, 199 feminist philosophers  88, 183, 200 Flew, Antony  199 Flood, Gavin  159, 195 Four Noble Truths  150–1 Frankena, William  194 Frechtman, Bernard  188 free will  5, 11, 25–7, 42–4, 47, 49–50, 52–3, 57, 61, 67, 74, 105. See also free will defense; free will theodicy free will defense  23–7 free will theodicy  46–56, 57–76 Freud, Sigmund  111, 193

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Index Gandhi, Mahatma  119 Garrido, Nancy  4 Garrido, Phillip  4 genocide  5, 83 Giberson, Karl W.  186 Gleick, James  184, 199 global refugee crisis  179 global theodicy of fulfillment. See theodicy: global theodicy of ­fulfillment God. See also divine constraints; divine hiddenness attributes of  6–8, 9–12, 18, 22–4, 29–31, 36, 67, 74, 75, 81, 89, 99–101, 103–4, 106, 134, 138, 173, 187, 200, 202 God-man 166 Golden Rule  66 good, problem of. See problem of good goods basic 66 conceivable 173 finite 162 great  33, 54 individual 168 non-transcendent 165 Greenberg, Irving  90, 190 Grey, Asa  186 Griffin, David Ray  56, 182, 186–7 Habermas, Gary  197 Harris, Sam  119–20, 127, 194 Hasker, William  x, 56, 182, 199 heaven  70–4, 130, 140, 166, 174 Hegel, G. W. F.  82 Hell  2, 56, 130, 140, 167, 203 Herman, Arthur  153, 159, 196, 199 Hick, John  x, 49–53, 55–6, 68, 73, 85, 155, 179, 185–8, 192, 196, 199 hiddenness argument  99–100 hiddenness of God. See divine ­hiddenness Higgins, Kathleen M.  193

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 209 Hindu account of evil  138–48, 153–9 Hinduism  8, 38, 66, 137–59, 169, 195 Hindus  38, 73, 75, 138, 140, 156, 159, 195 Hitchens, Christopher  130, 194 Hitler, Adolf  129 holocaust  13, 76, 80–3, 91, 162, 190 horrendous evils  5, 162, 165–6, 179, 190, 196, 198 Howard-Snyder, Daniel  19, 113, 184, 195, 198, 200, 203 Hume, David  1, 3, 19, 39, 41, 68, 182, 185, 190, 200 Hurston, Zora Neil  101, 191 immortality  72, 172–3, 179, 197–9, 203 impermanence 151 incarnation 166 incompatibilism 27–8 Irenaean theodicy. See theodicy: Irenaean Isaiah (Hebrew prophet)  33, 72, 102 Islam  6, 34, 40, 66, 138, 192, 198 James, William  108–9 Jantzen, Grace  17, 175, 179, 183, 200 Jesus Christ  102, 119, 164, 192, 203 Job  34, 94 Judaism  3, 6, 26, 66, 80–4, 138, 191, 200 Julian of Norwich  166–7, 196 justice  122, 138, 140–1, 157, 159, 172–3, 185 cosmic 139–40 karmic 157 universal  111, 139–40 Kant, Immanuel  172–3 Karamazov, Ivan  162 karma  3, 196, 200, 201 description of  138–43 objections to  153–9

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210 Kaufman, Walter  160, 193, 196, 200, 201 King, Martin Luther, Jr.  119 Knapp, Steven  179, 182, 187 Kreeft, Peter  200 Kushner, Harold  11, 200 Kvanvig, Jonathan  200 Lactantius 182 laws. See karma; moral laws Lewis, C. S.  19, 56, 119, 129, 179, 200 Loftus, John  104, 191–2 logical arguments from evil. See problem(s) of evil: logical arguments love  x, 3, 6, 52–3, 56, 64–6, 98–9, 104–5, 108–9, 164–5, 173, 179, 196, 199, 203 McBrayer, Justin P. 195 McGrath, Alister 134, 168, 197, 199, 200 MacIntyre, Alasdair  199 Mackie, J. L.  19, 22, 24, 29, 39, 183, 193, 200 Mahabharata 137 Maimonides, Moses  75 Maitzen, Stephen  191 Manson, Charles  2 Martin, C. B.  192, 200 Martin, Michael  39 maya 145–8 Meister, Chad  104–5 Meyer, Stephen C.  186 Mill, John Stuart  70, 188 misotheism  13, 77–92, 101, 189, 191, 202 moksha 148 Moody, Raymond  195, 197 moral agency  5, 53, 67–8, 75, 156 moral argument  128–34, 172, 194, 199 moral depravity  48

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Index moral evils. See evil: moral moral growth  50, 68 moral imperatives  48 morality evolutionary 133 grounding 118–22 objective 128–34 moral judgments  117 moral laws  131–2, 138, 140, 172 moral maturity  68 moral objectivism  133 moral obligations  176 moral principles  151 moral reformers  119 moral relativism  118–19, 121, 133 moral truths  119–20, 128–31, 133 moral values  87, 118, 125, 127, 132 objective 128–34 Moreland, J. P.  197, 199 Morris, Thomas V.  203 Moser, Paul K.  vii, x, 18–19, 39, 76, 91, 103–5, 113, 184–5, 189, 192, 200–203 Muhammad 66 Muller, Max F.  195 Murray, Michael  x Nagarjuna  148, 150 Nagel, Thomas  93, 190 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)  1, 65, 181 Native American traditions  3 natural evils. See evil: natural naturalism  59–60, 134, 199. See also atheism Naugle, David K.  182 Nazis  13, 47, 80, 118–19, 101 NDEs (near-death experiences)­   171–2, 197 near-death experiences. See NDEs Neufeldt, Ronald  160, 200 Nietzsche, Friedrich  120–1, 134, 193, 201 Nirguna Brahman  145

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Index nirvana  138, 150–1, 153 Noble Eightfold Path  150–1 noseeum arguments  32–6 no-self (Buddhist doctrine)  149–52, 156 Okholm, Dennis L.  192 Oord, Thomas Jay  56, 182, 187 open theists  12 Oppy, Graham  28, 39, 184 original sin  48, 185 pain  4–5, 15–17, 19, 36–7, 44–5, 49–51, 59–61, 68–9, 81, 85–6, 89–90, 95, 115–16, 175–6, 185–6 Pali Canon  196 panentheism  143, 187 pantheism 143–4 Pascal, Blaise  106, 192 Paul, Apostle  168, 190 Peacocke, Arthur  63, 187 Peers, Allison  192, 203 Perrine, Timothy  184 persecution  95–6, 167 personal identity  170–1 Peterson, Michael  x, 19, 191, 197–8, 201, 202 Phillips, D. Z.  56, 73, 76, 85–7, 91, 188–90 Philo (of Alexandria)  203 Pinker, Steven  185 Pinnock, Sarah Katherine  76, 91 Plantinga, Alvin  14, 16, 23–5, 27, 39, 167, 183, 196, 201, 203 Plato 169 Platonism 163 Plotinus 43 Pojman, Louis  viii, 65, 181, 188, 194 Polkinghorne, John  187 possible world  23–9, 37, 183 postmodernity 89 Potter, Harry  69 Prabhavananda, Swami  195, 202 predation  26, 70, 72

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 211 privatio boni 43 privation  43–4, 46 problem of good  128–33 problem(s) of evil atheism 115–35 Buddhism  137–43, 148–59 Draper’s evidential argument 36–8 evidential arguments  29–32 existential 14–16 Hinduism  137–48, 153–9 Islam  6–8, 26, 34, 66, 109, 138 logical arguments  22–9 noseeum arguments  32–6 pastoral 14–16 Rowe’s evidential argument  29–32 skeptical theism (see skeptical theism) Proslogian  183, 198 protest, theodicy of. See theodicy: of protest punishment  45, 130, 139–40, 155, 158 Quinn, Philip  201 Qur’an  6–7, 34, 169 Rachels, James  193 Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli  110, 192 Ramanuja 75 Rea, Michael  x, 113 rebirth  73, 138–41, 148, 150–3, 158–61, 196, 200. See also ­transmigration Rees, Richard  186 refugee crisis  179 Reichenbach, Bruce  160, 201, 202 reincarnation  140–3, 156, 171, 195 Reitan, Eric  201 relativism 118–20 religious experience  107–13, 163, 192–3, 196, 200 religious pluralism  76

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212 resurrection 167–8 Rodrigues, Sebastian  95 Roth, John K.  56, 76, 81–3, 91, 189–90, 201 Rowe, William  x, 27, 29, 30–1, 36, 130, 184, 194, 201–2 Runzo, Joseph  196 Ruse, Michael  125, 193, 202 Russell, Bertrand  96–7, 190–1, 202 Saguna Brahman  145–6 Salmon, Wesley  190 Sartre, Jean-Paul  65, 188 Satan 45 Schaff, Philip  182 Schellenberg, John  97, 98–9, 113, 191, 202 Schleiermacher, F. D. E.  49 Schweizer, Bernard  80, 189, 191, 202 Sennett, James  202 Senor, Thomas  202 Shakespeare, William  21, 74, 193 Shankara  75, 144–7, 195, 202 Sharma, Arvind  195 silence of God  13, 34, 90, 93–113, 167, 174, 190. See also deus ­absconditus; divine hiddenness sin  3, 44–6, 48, 52–3, 58, 167, 185 Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter  131–3, 135, 194, 199, 202 Sire, James W.  182 skeptical theism  32–6, 40, 47, 77, 89, 184 Smeir, Issam  179 Smith, Sydney  186 Soerens, Matthew  179 Solomon, Robert C.  193 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr  1 soul-making theodicy  41–3, 45, 47, 49–55, 57–76, 84–5, 187, 192 Southgate, Christopher  187–8 Spiegel, James  191 Stalin, Joseph  47 Stewart, Robert  134, 199

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Index Stump, Eleonore  vii, 55, 179, 185, 197, 202 Stump, James  x Sudduth, Michael  195 Summa Theologica  182, 198 sunyata  148, 150 Surin, Kenneth  85, 189 Swinburne, Algernon Charles  79 Swinburne, Richard  x, 10, 51, 56, 86, 182, 186–7, 190, 202 Taliaferro, Charles  vii, x, 19, 39, 179, 197, 200, 201, 202, 203 Taylor, Richard  188 Teresa, Mother  129 Teresa of Avila, St.  108, 192, 203 theism  6, 9–11, 17, 19, 28–9, 36–9, 59–60, 62–3, 93, 100, 106, 115, 137, 173, 191, 200–202 theodicy  vi–vii, 18–19, 31, 162, 168, 175–6 anti-theodicy 83–9 Augustinian free-will  41–9, 56, 146 global theodicy of fulfillment 57–76 Irenaean  186, 199 of protest  75–83 soul-making  41–2, 49–56 Timpe, Kevin  188 Tomberlin, James  196, 201 Tooley, Michael  184, 203 Torah  66, 81 Tracy, Thomas  187 Trakakis, Nick  76, 84–91, 189–90, 203 transmigration  140, 143, 152. See also rebirth ultimate reality  6, 88, 138, 143–5, 148, 161, 195 unbelief  101, 191 utilitarianism  85, 126–7, 133, 135, 194, 202

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Index value judgments  117 values  x, 19, 47, 50, 57, 61, 139 evolutionary 116–28 intrinsic 65–70 objective 128–33 VanArragon, Raymond J.  191, 202 van Inwagen, Peter  182, 203 Voltaire 176 Wainwright, William J.  197–8, 202 Wallace, Stan W.  194 Walls, Jerry  x, 56, 134, 198, 203

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 213 Ward, Keith  x, 71, 72, 186–8, 197 Weil, Simone  2, 57, 163, 186, 196, 203 Wesley, John  72, 188 Wiesel, Elie  13, 77, 80–81, 183, 189 Wilberforce, William  119 Williams, Bernard  135, 202 Williams, Thomas  56, 185 Wilson, Edward O.  125, 193, 202 Winter, Timothy  39 Wright, Robert  193 Wykstra, Stephen  32, 35, 36, 40, 56, 184, 203

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