#1: God Is Silent
#2: God Is Inert
#3: The Evidence Is Inadequate
#4: Christianity Predicts a Different Universe
His next argument is equally simple: God is inert. The argument goes like this: God is all powerful. God is a loving God. Things exist in the world that a loving, all powerful God would do away with if he could. Therefore, God does not exist.
Here it is in his words:
It's a simple fact of direct observation that if I had the means and the power, and could not be harmed for my efforts, I would immediately alleviate all needless suffering in the universe. All guns and bombs would turn to flowers. All garbage dumps would become gardens. There would be adequate resources for everyone. There would be no more children conceived than the community and the environment could support. There would be no need of fatal or debilitating diseases or birth defects, no destructive Acts of God. And whenever men and women seemed near to violence, I would intervene and kindly endeavor to help them peacefully resolve their differences. That's what any loving person would do. Yet I cannot be more loving, more benevolent than the Christian God. Therefore, the fact that the Christian God does none of these things--in fact, nothing of any sort whatsoever--is proof positive that there is no Christian God.
This is certainly a difficult problem, one that I have struggled with for a long time. One does not need to watch the news very long to realize that the world is not the way it should be. A couple years ago my mother-in-law passed away from colon cancer. She was an awesome person - she loved God with all her heart, even in the midst of her illness. I remember attending church with her in the final months of her life, when the effects of her cancer and chemotherapy were really starting to become obvious. As we sang, (I don't remember the song) I remember turning to look at her. She was standing, eyes closed, olive green arms outstretched, praising her heavenly Father. My wife was at her bedside when she died. It was not a peaceful death. Why would God do this to someone with so much faith, someone who loves him so much?
It reminds me of a poem I have sitting in my quotes list (I can't remember where I got it) that sums up the problem in a rather poignant way:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-- Epicurus
The problem of evil is, in my opinion, the most compelling argument against the existence of God.
Job surely would have something to say: He asked this question, and demanded that God answer him. And answer him He did:
Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm:
"Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
"Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?"
Job 40:6-8
And it doesn't stop there; God unleashes a barrage of Who do you think you are? and Who are you to question me? that would make any man shrivel up into a speck of dust.
Just to be sure Job didn't think these questions were rhetorical, God ends his assault with:
"Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!" Job 40:2
Job's answer:
"My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes."
Job 42:5-6
So, according to the book of Job, the appropriate answer to the problem of evil, and why bad things happen to good people is: Who are you to question God?
Now, I believe this is probably the best and only way for us to respond when life becomes unfair. But on second look, I think there is more to this story.
As I explained in my last post, God created us to love him. Real love is not forced, not compelled, and does not arise from obligation or fear of punishment, it is freely given by an individual who makes a choice to love. In order to bring this kind of love about, God had to give his creation the choice to love Him. This was a risk, for sure.
Part of loving God is obeying Him. A lot of the evil in the world arises from human beings exercising their free will, disobeying God. Creatures that are free to love must be free to choose. This could explain evil that arises as a result of human beings, but what about natural disasters? Hurricanes, earthquakes and floods surely are not the result of free will. Why doesn't God stop natural disasters?
I think it is entirely possible that the natural laws that govern the behavior of tectonic plates and tropical storm systems exist because they are just the sort of laws required for the existence of beings with free will. C.S. Lewis made this same suggestion in his book, The Problem of Pain:
"Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you will find that you have excluded life itself."
As Lewis continues, he almost appears to be answering Carrier's objections point-for-point, he describes the world that Carrier suggests is "the way it should be" and points out that this type of world is intrinsically incompatable with a world in which free will exists:
We can, perhaps, conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of... [our] abuse of free will... at every moment: so that a wooden beam became soft as grass when it was used as a weapon, and the air refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound waves that carry lies or insults. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void... Not even Omnipotence could create a society of free souls without at the same time creating a relatively independent and 'inexorable' Nature."
Carrier, in his essay, actually comes pretty close to answering his own question in a way that might satisfy Lewis:
The only possible exception here is when a loving person is incapable of acting as he desires--either lacking the ability or facing too great a risk to himself or others--but this exception never applies to a God, who is all-powerful and immune to all harm.
I think Carrier has it right: God is "incapable" of granting free will without also allowing evil to reign in the world where that free will exists; the two go hand-in-hand. It is similar to asking the question we have all heard: Can God create a stone so big even HE can't lift it? Or can God make a round square? These are nonsense questions because they ignore the nature of things; All squares must have four sides, it is nonsense to think of a round square. Likewise, all beings with free will must exist in a universe with both natural and human evil.
Finally, a somewhat more satisfactory answer lies again in the consequences of free will, and in God's purpose for his creation. A lot of people look at the world as if God created it as a playground for people. Any time we are inconvenienced, any time our pleasure is cut short by some natural event, they think that the world has somehow fallen short of the "way things should be." However, this assumes God's goal is to make us happy, or at least to give us pleasure. What if his goal is to change us?
I asked my wife why she thought bad things happen to good people, and one of her answers was exactly this; "Well, bad things help us change." I think she is exactly right.
In any case, I'm sure it will always remain in my mind as one of the most difficult for any Christian to answer. Perhaps we might learn from Job's experiences and come to peace with the fact that a completely satisfactory answer is intentionally beyond our grasp.
Next, I'll tackle Carrier's third objection to Christianity: The evidence is inadequate.
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