God, Evil, and Hiddenness Midterm

Draper

Background

Atheist given evidential argument from evil.

• Considered more generally about all pain and suffering out there.

Draper

H.I.

Hypothesis of indifference; there might be nothing supernatural or there might be, but if there is it can’t be trying to help us or hurt us.

Draper

Argument

P(HI/O) > ! P(theism/O)

• O = sum total of evidence about evil; sum total of all pains and pleasures of moral and non moral agents.

• Gets here by: P(O/HI) > ! P(O/theism)

Draper

Argument - O

O1

• Pain and pleasures that moral agents(humans) experience that is known to be biologically useful.

O2

• Pain or pleasures that non-moral agents(animals, infants) experience that is known to be biologically useful.

O3

• Pains or pleasures not known to be biologically useful.

Draper

Argument - O3

Biologically gratuitous pain: biologically appropriate pain that doesn’t end up being biologically useful.

• Someone who feels pain, is fire, but ends up dying; appropriate because they feel pain so they try to get out of fire, not useful because they end up dying.

Biologically useful(just not known to be).

Draper

Argument - Pathological Pain

Pain/pleasure that doesn’t make any sense.

Include things that aren’t biologically appropriate/don’t make biological sense.

• Cancer, being wracked with guilt and doesn’t serve biological goals of human organism.

Draper

Probability of O1

P(O1/HI) and compares to P(OI/theism)

• Thinks P(OI/HI) will always be > than P(OI/theism) and sometimes > ! than.

• P(OI/HI) >! P(OI/theism) - he thinks it’s much greater.

  • P(OI/HI) assumes HI is true. He thinks the bullet point above because if God didn’t exist, nature is indifferent to human beings; raw evolution would be guiding and there would be natural selection - organisms better suited for challenged more likely to survive and pass genes along. Evolution sill shape humans to environment. If there’s no God, things will still hurt because it’s still bad for you - you feel pain, evolution has created nervous system to make us feel pain. If we didn’t feel pain, we wouldn’t avoid feeling certain pains in future. Regular unguided evolution with no supernatural beings. Thinks this side will be high.

Draper

Theism side to OI argument

God doesn’t need to work in terms of pains and pleasures - he can give people instincts, warnings - if God could get by without making unnecessary pain, he would.

Draper

Probability of O2

P(O2/HI) > P(O2/theism)

• Still thinks number is bigger than on right, but not as dramatic.

• HI side: same as OI side.

• Theism side: Reason that O2 doesn’t fit in as much as OI is as non moral agents can’t engage in moral behavior. You can’t teach them pain and pleasure and won’t help them towards moral growth. Wouldn’t be surprising that God had animals experience pain and pleasure.

Draper

Probability of O3

P(O3/HI) > ! P(O3/theism)

• Thinks it’s much greater.

• HI: evolution response.

• Theism: expect God to use pains and pleasures to serve moral purposes. No reason for this biological process to carry out in a case when it makes no biological sense. If God existed, he would use his power to take away pain. If you do something bad, why doesn’t God punish you? We see little evidence of God using pain and pleasure to serve moral purposes.

Draper

Probability Overall of O

2 really big advantages and 1 smaller advantage add up to a really big advantage: P(O/HI) > ! P(O/theism)

• Theism less probable because:

  • Doesn’t have a lot of evidence.

  • HI is a very general hypothesis compatible with many situtation; theism is very specific and only works with one being - these types of things usually don’y have high prior probability.

Draper

Final Conclusion

P(HI/O) > ! P(theism/O)

Swinburne

2 pronged strategy

In his defense of the existence of God

• Higher order of goods theodicy.

• Knowledge theodicy.

Swinburne

Knowledge theodicy

Less sophisticated stance:

• Significant free will; we can poison people but we do not.

More sophisticated stance:

• Stable natural environment where there are laws of nature with predictable consequences - the price of living in this environment are the natural evils.

Swinburne

Higher Order of Goods Theodicy

Natural evils are required to get the “goods” of the world.

Higher Order of Goods:

• Persistent desires

• Competitive desires

• Courageous action/bravery

• Compassion

• Wisdom

• Appreciation

• Soul-making

• Work to relieve and prevent suffering

Swinburne

Objection of Higher Order of Goods Theodicy

The higher order of goods are good, but not good enough to be worth all the pain and suffering.

• When discovering a specific religion, you can’t look at that religions understanding of goodness.

Swinburne

Response’s to Objection

• Use moral views of the religion being evaluated - need to look at what are the official views in religion being looked at; can’t oppose some outside moral theory.

  • Says if you do that, looking carefully at what is important in certain religions, certain things are looking at and weighed differently.

• Modern secular people are not as hedonistic as they might initially think.

  • Hedonistic(philosophically): the only intrinsically valuable thing is pleasure and opposite of valuable is pain.

  • Modern secular morality have tendency to think pain is very bad and pleasure is really good. Swinburne says they will discover that they aren’t hedonistic because they will believe that they will find pleasure in his points.

Swinburne

Experience Machine

Example for hedonistic point.

Get approached and someone says they are neuroscientists that can stimulate brains and read them with a machine. Machine can give you the best life. Will give you just enough pain so you appreciate greatness of machine. Catch is it is a VR machine. You won’t know that; it gives seamless transition; you won’t remember.

Swinburne

Experience Machine Argument

(1) If you would refuse to plug into the EM, then you are not a hedonist. - value of reality over pleasure.

(2) You would refuse to plug into the EM.

So:

(3) You are not a hedonist.

Swinburne

Fawn in Forest Fire

Also talks about fawn in forest fire; different from Rowe’s because in original, fawn is by itself and no one comes to know about it. In Swinburne’s there are many animals around observing who grow compassion.

Swinburne

What does this picture signify?

Wants to try to convince that real natural evil is only a small subset.

Apparent natural evil: These problems involve bad moral decisions a lot of the time(selfish decisions ex). Allowed for circumstances and suffering to occur. Bad decision making turns suffering into moral suffering.

• Real natural evils are a lot smaller than what we would normally associate natural evils.

Swinburne

Why does God allow animals to suffer?

Swinburne believes there are all these higher order of goods that are made possible by this suffering - learning, compassion, courage, etc.

• Doesn’t believe animals to have free will; behaving in ways that are completely predictable. Even so, their actions are still valuable and can explain why God would allow animal suffering.

  • Not so obvious that animals do show a lot of high order goods - very few animals can learn from another(ex).

Van Inwagen

Main Objective

Trying to explain why God allows animal suffering

Van Inwagen

What are the 3 ways he distinguishes between that God deals with the problem of evil?

FAR LEFT: Traditional Defense

• Something meant to deal with logical problem of evil - doesn’t help deal with evidential problem of evil.

• X = content of explanation and S = suffering

  • P(S/theism + X) = 1 → story goes along with existence of God and it explains in detail why we have pain and suffering.

  • P(X/theism) does not = 0 → story can’t contradict existence of God.

FAR RIGHT: Theodicy - gold standard; what people are going for.

• P(S/theism + X) = 1 → story goes along with existence of God and it explains in detail why we have pain and suffering.

• P(X/theism) is high → the story is extremely plausible and fits in with the existence of God.

Van Inwagen doesn’t like any of these responses, so he creates his own:

IN THE MIDDLE: PVI Defense

• P(S/theism + X) = 1 → story goes along with existence of God and it explains in detail why we have pain and suffering.

• P(X/theism) is not low for all anyone known → when you see story, you won’t be convinced whether or not it will fit in the story/existence with God; it might, it might not.

Van Inwagen

Why does he think he only needs to give a PVI defense as compared to a theodicy?

Hieroglyphics ex: You’ve never looked at a hieroglyph and someone hands you something asking if it’s a hieroglyph. You wouldn’t know an exact percentage if it is or not. The same goes for God. Psychologically, people are rarely that confident/precise in their knowledge of things. He is trying to be psychologically realistic.

• Another reason is because the existence of one PVI defense might point in direction of other potential stories.

  • Atom ex: you are in ancient Greece an you know a lot about science and are talking to someone who doesn’t. They are asking why atoms don’t just fall to the ground. You say that maybe atoms have tiny spines that prevent them from falling. This explanation provides evidence that there can be multiple coherent explanations.

Van Inwagen

Basic Idea of Argument

There’s something valuable in having a world where things proceed in a way where there’s evolution. In a world like this, there will be pain and suffering.

Van Inwagen

Summary of Official Statement

God has a choice → animal suffering or massive irregularity.

• If God is going to have higher level sentient beings, he has a choice.

God has no decisive moral reason to prefer massive irregularity to animal suffering.

• You may think choice is easy - miracles over suffering.

• Van Inwagen believes God shouldn’t automatically choose massive irregularity.

• He thinks massive irregularity is defect in world. He thinks it could be contributing negative value to world.

  • If humans are going to operate and make moral decisions, they have to do so in a stable and predictable environment. If God were to conduct miracles, it wouldn’t be a stable and predictable environment.

• Direct Aesthetic(beauty of creation): value of having evolutionary process. This would be lost if you have God running around performing miracles.

Van Inwagen

Massive Irregularity

World without natural laws/order.

Constant miracles by God.

Van Inwagen

Why does God face this choice?

God can figure out how to solve this problem - Van Inwagen doesn’t think this is the case. He think he faces choice because:

• God getting rid of 1 animal suffering doesn’t solve problem: many animals suffering - Van Inwagen believes we need to look at causes of suffering and what God can do about it. Van Inwagen thinks God can prevent suffering, but it would include miracles - massive irregularity.

  • God’s going to have to tolerate suffering or create miracle.

Van Inwagen

No Morally Decisive Reason to Prefer X to Y

Y better than X

Y is morally equivalent to X

Y cant be compared to X - might be different enough from one another that they simply can’t be compared

Van Inwagen

Utilitarianism

Do whatever produces the most pleasure over pain.