Franz Kiekeben's Blog

the reality of senseless suffering

 The following was originally intended for John Loftus's book God and Horrendous Suffering, but retracted by me after several changes to it that I did not approve of were forced on it by a reviewer. It has now been published (as close to my original paper as I could remember) on Loftus's site as well as here:
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​The traditional argument from evil claimed that God was incompatible with any amount of suffering, for God could, and would want to, prevent every instance of it. Most philosophers nowadays regard that as too strong. A certain amount of suffering might be allowed by God, provided there is a morally sufficient reason for his allowing it—provided, in other words, the suffering serves some greater purpose or is the unavoidable consequence of something that justifies its existence. For instance, it may be that our having free will is a great good which more than compensates for any evil actions resulting from that freedom. Or it may be that certain types of suffering are the only way to bring about something of immense value. As an example of the latter, it is possible that in order to freely develop into the sort of beings that God wants us to become, we must first overcome certain challenges—and these may include disappointments, feelings of frustration, and other experiences we would prefer not going through. (As some theists put it, God’s intention was not to create a paradise in which to keep us perfectly happy, but to create a place where we can grow and develop into persons worthy of spending eternity with him.) It is also possible that an instance of suffering today is the least terrible means of preventing a far greater amount of suffering at some future date. Each of these, as well as several other possibilities that will be discussed below, provides a conceivable explanation for at least some of the bad things that happen in this world.
But even if God is not incompatible with all suffering, he is incompatible with suffering that cannot be justified by some outweighing benefit. Such suffering would be senseless or gratuitous, and if we are to take seriously the claim that God is perfectly good as well as all-powerful and all-knowing, we cannot suppose that he would let someone suffer without reason. If one has the ability to prevent such pointless suffering, yet fails to do so, one cannot be considered morally perfect. It follows that there can either be a God, or there can be senseless suffering, but not both. This leads to a very simple argument in support of atheism:


(1) God is incompatible with senseless suffering
(2) There is senseless suffering
(3) Therefore, there is no God
Now, the existence of suffering itself is not in question. That of senseless suffering, however, is more open to doubt. The theist can always maintain, it seems, that what may appear to us unnecessary and without justification might have some reason behind it. Thus, when faced with the above problem, most theists who are familiar with the issue deny the existence of senseless suffering. Some have attempted to develop theodicies—that is, explanations as to why God allows certain evils—as a solution. Others merely claim that there must be some explanation, even if we do not know what it is, since otherwise God would not allow such events. Either way, the denial allows them to continue believing in a perfect creator.
To others, however, it seems obvious that much of the misery and pain we see around us serves no purpose and could be avoided without incurring anything equally bad or worse. This paper will attempt to show that that intuition is in fact correct. There are cases of suffering that we have good reason for considering unjustified. But if we have good reason for thinking that there is such a thing as senseless suffering, then we have good reason for disbelieving in the existence of God.
Before proceeding, however, we have to consider another way of criticizing the above argument, for not every theist agrees as to what form the solution to the problem should take. According to some, there is something else there that should be disputed.


The Denial of the First Premise
Philosopher Stephen Wykstra once referred to the incompatibility of God and senseless suffering as “a basic conceptual truth deserving assent by theists and nontheists alike.” [Wykstra, 77] Most believers share his view, and therefore reply to the above argument by maintaining that all suffering must in fact have some justification. According to some, however, even suffering that serves no purpose and that could be avoided without loss is compatible with God. Thus, rather than denying its existence, such theists maintain that in at least certain situations God allows senseless suffering. They challenge the argument, not by arguing against the second premise, but by arguing against the first.
For the most part, this rather unorthodox view is the result of different interpretations of what is meant by “senseless” or “gratuitous,” or of what perfect goodness entails. And in some cases, it is due to simple confusion. Nevertheless, it is important to examine the claims of those who argue this way. Doing so will at the very least clarify the nature of the problem. This section therefore surveys the main suggestions that have been advanced in defense of God-condoned senseless suffering.
Perhaps the simplest among them is that based on God’s supposed inscrutability. As is often said, God works in mysterious ways. Some therefore appeal to our ignorance of his purposes and intentions in order to argue that we may simply be incapable of understanding why he permits senseless suffering. Who are we to say God could not allow such a thing?
This suggestion, however, misses the point of the problem. One does not need to understand what God’s reasons might be in order to see the incompatibility of a perfect being with that of suffering that is not justified. That incompatibility does not depend on any specific details regarding God’s purposes. Rather, it is based on what the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good being entails. A being with that combination of attributes could not allow pointless suffering in the sense described above. God’s inscrutability is therefore an irrelevant detail.
A second argument says that it is enough for God to create beings whose lives contain more happiness than unhappiness. After all, he did not have to create anything at all. Our existence is a gift from God. It follows that if our lives are, on the whole, worth living, we have no reason to complain. And yet, such lives are compatible with a certain amount of suffering that serves no purpose and that could have been avoided. Therefore, God can allow senseless suffering.
The main problem with this solution is that creating beings whose lives are on the balance positive is not sufficient for perfect goodness. A god who allows unnecessary suffering is, everything else being equal, not as good as one who prevents its occurrence. Therefore, such a god cannot be perfect. We may have no basis for complaining to a creator who acted in this way, given that we owe everything to him. In fact, one may argue that to criticize God is to be ungrateful and rather petty. All of that is beside the point, however. This second argument, then, fails as well.
Some state that evil is not a positive property, but is instead the mere lack of goodness. This idea provides theists with a third way of claiming senseless suffering to be compatible with God. For, on this view, in allowing senseless suffering, God is not allowing some actual thing, but only the absence of something—and that, some suppose, makes all the difference.
Unfortunately, this attempt to solve the difficulty misses the point as well. In fact, there are at least two things wrong with it. First, it is obviously false that suffering is merely the lack of some property. To suffer is to experience something—for example, physical pain—and that something is very real. It makes no sense to explain away that reality by describing it as, say, “lacking substance.” To do so is to ignore the facts. But the second flaw with this proposal is, if anything, more serious. For even if we were to grant that suffering is only the absence of something, the problem would remain. God would not allow that absence any more than he would allow the presence of a positive evil. After all, the absence of something can be (and in this case, would be) a bad thing. To allow it without reason is therefore, once again, incompatible with perfection.
Another suggestion consists of claiming that we have better reasons for believing in God than for believing in the incompatibility of God with senseless suffering. In other words, instead of arguing:


(1) God is incompatible with senseless suffering
(2) There is senseless suffering
(3) Therefore, there is no God
one may argue:
(1*) There is a God
(2) There is senseless suffering
(3*) Therefore, God is compatible with senseless suffering.
This kind of move is called a “Moorean shift,” after the influential twentieth-century philosopher G. E. Moore, who used it in a different context. Now, most theists, as already mentioned, reject the second premise in the original argument rather than the first. On their view, it is more reasonable to deny the existence of senseless suffering than to deny God’s incompatibility with it. At the very least, that seems a more reasonable alternative. The main objection to the above, however, is that it does not appear that the existence of God is more certain than the incompatibility claim. Whereas that incompatibility, once understood, seems obvious, God’s existence is much more open to doubt. To a convinced believer, this may not appear to be the case. However, one should keep in mind what is meant by “God” here. It does not mean merely an intelligent creator of the universe, nor even one who created it specifically for us. It means a being who is in addition omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. Now, this is a rather remarkable set of characteristics. There would have to be quite a bit of evidence in its favor to make belief in such an entity even somewhat reasonable. Yet the arguments for God that theists find the most convincing do not support the existence of anything answering that description, or even so much as approaching it. At most, design arguments (including the fine-tuning argument) lead to the conclusion that an intelligence is responsible for the properties of the universe, and cosmological arguments to the conclusion that something (not necessarily an intelligence) caused everything else to exist. None of them says anything about omniscience, omnipotence, or perfect goodness. And ontological arguments, which do say something about those properties, are far more problematic, and almost universally rejected.
So far, four different attempts to show God’s compatibility with senseless suffering have been discussed, none of which was very promising. The remaining ones, which are somewhat stronger, focus on the possibility of senseless suffering being either a cause or an effect of some outweighing good. In this, they mirror the explanations of justified suffering mentioned at the start of this paper.
Some of these arguments state that senseless suffering may be a necessary means for achieving a desired end. One example of this was suggested by William Lane Craig. In a book-length debate on the existence of God with philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Craig says that perhaps “only in a world in which gratuitous natural and moral evils exist [do the] the optimal number of persons… freely come to salvation and the knowledge of God.” [Craig and Sinnot-Armstrong, 126] On this sort of view, then, senseless suffering is allowed to occur in order to bring about something worthwhile, or allow something worthwhile to continue existing. But in that case, why regard the suffering as senseless? Craig recognizes this as a potential objection. He admits that his opponent might say that the suffering is not gratuitous given that it serves a greater purpose. What we have here, then, is really a semantic disagreement. Craig’s idea of what constitutes gratuitous suffering is not the one mentioned above (and presumably not the one Sinnott-Armstrong had in mind when he stated that “even one bit of unjustified evil disproves the existence of God”). [Craig and Sinnot-Armstrong, 85] Much the same can be said with regards to the remaining views in this section.
A group of similar but distinct arguments involve an appeal, either directly or indirectly, to free will (where what is meant is what philosophers call libertarian free will, the ability to act in a way that is not predetermined). Such an appeal is, of course, found in the most common reply to the problem of evil, the claim that evil exists because God gave us the freedom to make our own choices. But the same idea can also be used more narrowly as an explanation for the existence of senseless suffering. On this view, God is justified in giving us freedom of choice because such freedom is something essential, or is at least a great good. However, because we have free will, we can bring about suffering that serves no purpose. Such suffering is therefore compatible with the existence of God.
A special case of the appeal to free will is based on the view known as open theism. Open theists maintain that, although God is omniscient, he does not have complete knowledge of the future because the future is as yet undetermined. For this reason, God cannot know ahead of time every evil that will occur as a result of our free choices. Senseless suffering is therefore a real possibility, and one that has in fact occurred throughout history.
There is more than one reason why one might regard free will as indispensable. One might claim that freedom is an end in itself. For example, free will might be so valuable that its existence more than compensates for any senseless suffering that happens because of it. This, however, seems rather implausible. Even if free will is a great good, the question remains why it should have unlimited scope—or, even if not unlimited, then at least to the extent that we see. The freedom of criminals to act is obviously less important than the rights of their victims. That, after all, is why societies try to prevent crime. And God could give us freedom while ensuring that no great suffering results from our actions. Why, then, allow senseless suffering?
According to the most common view, the answer lies in treating free will, not as an end in itself, but as a necessary means toward some other end, such as the existence of virtue or the possibility of our having a personal relationship with the creator. Philosopher Michael Peterson, for instance, argues that curtailing freedom so as to eliminate the possibility of senseless suffering would undermine responsibility and morality, so that the “moral enterprise” would be greatly diminished. [Peterson, 126-27] Our freedom itself might not be sufficient justification for all of the pain and misery that humans cause, but, according to this view, the existence of morality is.
But whether it is freedom itself, or something made possible by that freedom, the argument underlying all of these views states that free will is a great good which God is justified in giving us. However, as a result of this freedom, we can bring about suffering that is not itself necessary for the existence of any outweighing good. An act of murder, for example, does not serve any purpose if its occurrence is not necessary to either bring about a greater good or prevent an equal or greater evil. Everything else being equal, the world would have been better without it. Such an act is therefore, according to the above views, senseless. Nevertheless, God permits it.
Once again, however, the actual disagreement here is about meaning. According to these views, God is justified in creating us free, in spite of the evils that result from it, because of the value of freedom. But if so, that means our freedom itself is a benefit that more than compensates for any suffering that results from its use—which means that such suffering is not in fact senseless according to our definition. While it is true that individual acts performed by us may not themselves be necessary for an outweighing good, an outweighing good—namely, free will—makes it necessary that they be allowed to occur. These views therefore also fail to show that God is compatible with senseless suffering.
The final and strongest argument we will consider is one due to the influential philosopher Peter van Inwagen. It states that there is an inherent vagueness in the amount of suffering needed for accomplishing God’s purposes, and that therefore it is to a certain extent an arbitrary matter whether some instance of it should be allowed. From this, it follows that God is justified in permitting some evils that are strictly speaking unnecessary, and therefore gratuitous.
To make this idea clearer, consider an analogy. Suppose that a city government passes a law making anyone who parks illegally subject to a fine. The purpose of such a law is, of course, to discourage illegal parking, and the amount the authorities decide to charge attempts to strike a reasonable balance between too harsh a punishment (which would create more hardship than the law justifies) and too lenient a punishment (which would fail to achieve its purpose). Does it follow, however, that there is an exact minimum that the authorities ought to set as the fine? If it is set at, say, twenty-five dollars, and that works, then it seems that twenty-four dollars and ninety cents would work just as well. But if so, then that means the government is charging violators an extra ten cents without justification. But then the same thing could be said about a twenty-four dollar and ninety-cent fine, for ten cents less than that might also work. The point is that there does not appear to be a set minimum that the fine should be set at. Nevertheless, there must be a fine in order to curb illegal parking. Thus, the government is justified in setting it at a given amount even though a slightly smaller amount would work just as well. Similarly, God may have to permit a certain amount of suffering in order to achieve his purposes, but if there is no precise minimum that God must permit, there will be instances of suffering that are not essential for those purposes. These, according to van Inwagen, are therefore gratuitous. Nevertheless, God is justified in allowing them.
Van Inwagen’s argument, if it works at all, can only do so if he is right about there being an inherent vagueness in the amount of suffering needed for God’s purposes. This isn’t necessarily the case. The analogy with a parking fine seems to make sense because, even if there is an optimum amount for such a fine in any given situation, we cannot tell that there is (much less what that amount might be). However, if there are strict cause and effect laws, there must be a specific fine that constitutes the minimum needed to discourage a given number of drivers in a particular area from parking illegally. (Nor is the number of drivers that ought to be discouraged arbitrary, for that is itself determined by the optimum balance of value accomplished versus cost incurred.) By the same reasoning, the suffering needed in the universe so as to achieve God’s purposes must be a set amount. Now, it is of course possible that in reality there are no strict cause and effect laws. But even if so, it remains the case that God could have created a world in which there are.
On the other hand, it is possible that a universe with strict cause and effect laws cannot be as desirable, and may even be incompatible with God’s purposes. One reason for maintaining this is, once again, the importance of free will. A universe with strict cause and effect laws would be deterministic, which is inconsistent with libertarian freedom. One might therefore argue that God was justified in creating the kind of world in which the amount of suffering needed is unavoidably vague.
Even if we grant this last point, however, it does not necessarily follow that any of the suffering allowed by God is senseless. Once again, that depends on what one means by the term. Van Inwagen’s argument specifically addresses the concept introduced by philosopher William Rowe, who called an instance of evil gratuitous if God could have prevented it “without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.” [Rowe, 336] As van Inwagen correctly points out, given that there is no minimum amount of suffering needed for accomplishing God’s purposes, whatever amount is sufficient will include some that could have been prevented without loss. Rowe’s definition therefore allows for at least this type of counterexample. But now consider the concept introduced above, which merely states that suffering is senseless whenever it cannot be justified by some outweighing good. If there is no minimum amount that God must allow for his purposes, does it follow that some amount will be senseless on this definition? Obviously not. For, if there is no precise amount, then it is impossible for God to ensure that no more than what is precisely needed occurs. At the same time, God is, as this argument presupposes, justified for the sake of an outweighing good in allowing some amount of suffering. It follows that every instance of suffering that he does allow is justified even if a little less might have been sufficient. This is no more problematic than the claim that a twenty-five dollar parking fine is justified. Van Inwagen’s argument, then, also fails on the definition of “senseless” used here.
Given God’s perfection, any suffering he permits must be morally justified. But if senseless suffering is suffering that is not justified by some outweighing good—and thus not morally justified—it follows that God cannot permit its occurrence. This means that any argument that attempts to provide a reason why God might allow it will either be mistaken or will mean something else by “senseless.” The only question that remains, then, is whether such suffering in fact occurs. That is the issue addressed in the final section.


Rowe’s Argument for the Reality of Senseless Suffering
The most frequently discussed argument for the existence of gratuitous evils is William Rowe’s. It uses examples of terrible evil and suffering that do not appear to serve any purpose and thus are very likely unjustified. Rowe refers to two cases in particular. The first is that of a fawn that has been burned in a forest fire and lies injured and helpless in great pain for several days before dying. This scenario was invented by Rowe, but there is no doubt that it is the sort of thing that sometimes happens. The second example is that of an actual case of a five-year-old girl who was brutally beaten, raped and strangled to death on New Year’s Day in 1986. As Rowe points out, it does not seem reasonable to suppose that an all-powerful and perfectly good being could have any reason for permitting either of these things. The evidence we have suggests that evil and suffering of this magnitude cannot be justified. But what is worse is that events like these are not isolated incidents. Many other similarly terrible things have taken place throughout history, and continue to do so on a daily basis. The amount of pain and misery in our world is staggering—and that makes it all the more certain that there can be no justification for each and every such event.
Some of course claim that there may be reasons for such events that we are unaware of. We may simply not be able to see what those reasons are due to our limited knowledge. Consider the connection that an event today may have with some outcome in the distant future. This is not something human beings can detect. Most of us have heard of the familiar example of a butterfly that, by beating its wings, sets up a causal chain that eventually results in the formation of a hurricane. In much the same way, the movements of the suffering fawn may lead to some great good, or prevent some great catastrophe, many years from now.
But while such things are certainly possible, we have no reason for supposing that they are true. They are, at best, rather unlikely. As Sinnott-Armstrong points out, if we see a butterfly beating its wings, we have no reason to worry about a potential storm, and in fact have good reason to dismiss the possibility.6 Most butterflies do not cause hurricanes, after all. And the same can be said with respect to other possible explanations of suffering that have been suggested. Even if they might be true, we have no reason for thinking that they are. The only evidence we have is of what appear to be a lot of pointless evils. As best as we can tell, there is no justification for them. This already makes it more likely than not that God does not exist.
However, it is not just that such events appear to be unjustified. What is even worse is that, in some cases, there does not appear to be anything that could justify them. Consider the rape and murder of the five-year-old. In a reply to Rowe, philosophers Daniel Howard-Snyder and Michael Bergmann suggest, as a possible justification, “the good of both the little girl and her murderer living together completely reconciled (which involves genuine and deep repentance on the part of the murderer and genuine and deep forgiveness on the part of the little girl) and enjoying eternal felicity in the presence of God.” [Howard-Snyder, Bergmann an Rowe, 152]  But in order for this to be sufficient, such a benefit must outweigh the horror of the act, and there must be no preferable alternative. Yet, neither of these seems to be the case. To begin with, there clearly appear to be better overall scenarios. In a world in which only minor evils occur, for example, those guilty of them might also come to feel deep repentance (because these would be the worst evils in that world) and be similarly forgiven by their victims. The benefits in this scenario, then, are analogous, whereas the negative act that leads to them pales by comparison. Even if we suppose that the benefits are fewer—perhaps because the amount of repentance and forgiveness involved is smaller—the overall balance of good to evil is certainly much better. In fact, of the two scenarios, only for the second is it plausible to maintain that good outweighs evil. Rowe concludes that, for any good we consider, it probably either fails to be sufficient to justify the suffering of the little girl, could have been actualized by God without such terrible suffering, or could have been replaced by some equal or greater good that could have been actualized without such terrible suffering. [Howard-Snyder, Bergmann and Rowe, 129] Moreover, this is the case not only with regards to this one example of horrendous suffering, but with respect to many other instances of it, and even with respect to many lesser evils.
Rowe’s argument, then, provides us with good evidence for the existence of senseless suffering, and therefore with good evidence for the nonexistence of God. But we need not stop there. A different, and arguably stronger, way of defending this conclusion is available.


Another Argument for the Reality of Senseless Suffering
As mentioned above, there are, broadly speaking, two ways to dispute the existence of senseless suffering: by claiming that there must be some justification for it that we do not know about, or by attempting to find specific reasons God might allow it. Similarly, one might say that there are two ways of arguing for the reality of senseless suffering, each roughly corresponding to one of the methods on the negative side. We have already covered the first, the claim that there does not appear to be any justification for many of the cases we see. The second is to try to show that particular instances of it cannot be justified.
One way to do the latter involves a fact that has been neglected in discussions of the problem of suffering. Consider the causal explanation suggested above for why God might allow the prolonged pain of the fawn: perhaps the laws of cause and effect are such that this is the only way to bring about some great benefit in the future. However, even if we grant that, it is not sufficient to justify the suffering. This explanation ignores the fact that God is omnipotent, and therefore is not bound by natural laws—laws that he himself created. He can change or override those laws, and thus can ensure the occurrence of the future event without having to depend on the suffering. To put it another way, God can perform a miracle. The fact that is often overlooked, then, is that, in order for the fawn’s suffering to be justified, it must be logically impossible for the future event to be brought about without it, or something at least as bad, taking place. So long as God can accomplish a goal painlessly, however, any suffering allowed for that purpose is unjustified.
Now, with respect to certain other evils, there are plausible reasons for claiming that they are logically necessary for a given outcome. One example is that of the repentance felt by a murderer. In order for something to qualify as genuine repentance, it must be felt in response to an actual instance of wrongdoing. Thus, even God cannot ensure that someone feels genuine repentance without permitting an immoral act. (This is, of course, a different question from whether such repentance is of sufficient value to excuse something as bad as murder.) But the case of the fawn does not appear to be like this. It seems clear that its suffering is not logically necessary for any purpose God might have. In its case, a miracle is available as an alternative. This fact can therefore be used as an argument for the existence of senseless suffering.
The fawn, which experiences terrible pain as it slowly dies, does not benefit in any way from its ordeal. Even if one supposes that it enjoys an afterlife, its suffering cannot be of use to it, for, unlike a person, it is incapable of learning some valuable lesson as a result. If there is some beneficial outcome, then, it must be for the sake of others. One possibility is the one already discussed, that the movements of the suffering fawn set up a causal chain that eventually leads to some event of immense value. Another is that someone who can learn a valuable lesson, perhaps on the importance of compassion, does so by becoming aware of the fawn’s suffering. The problem is that neither of these seems to require actual suffering. The reason is simple: God can make it the case that the animal experiences no pain, yet behaves as if it does. There is more than one way for an omnipotent being to accomplish this, but perhaps the simplest would be to prevent certain neurons from firing and then cause movements in the fawn’s muscles as if they had fired. Clearly, neither of these is logically impossible. Moreover, the miracle in this case would be sufficiently limited and localized so as to go undetected. (One reason some claim that God needs to accomplish his goals by means of normal causal processes, rather than by directly creating them through miracles, is that it is important for the universe to behave in a lawful, predictable manner. A hidden miracle such as the one just described, however, avoids this problem.) In this way, God can set up a causal chain leading to some important result without, however, there being any pain. The pain that the fawn in reality experiences is therefore unjustified. And that means it is not compatible with the existence of God.
What can a theist say in response? There are a few potential objections, but none that is plausible. One might question whether it is possible for God to perform the described miracle while avoiding all harmful consequences. However, any effect the miracle might have would necessarily follow in accordance with the laws of nature, which, as already observed, cannot constrain God. Another possible response is to deny that God would perform such a miracle because doing so would constitute an act of deception. Anyone observing the fawn would believe it is suffering when in fact it is not. But such a complaint can only make sense if that act of deception is worse than the pain experienced by the fawn, which seems clearly false. Neither of these replies is convincing, then.
A third objection, and one that might occur to most people, is that perhaps the miracle scenario described is in fact what happens—in other words, that God actually does intervene to prevent animals in this type of situation from experiencing pain. In this way, the senseless suffering fails to occur. In effect, this third response consists of employing the Moorean shift described above. To argue this way is to claim that the existence of God is more certain than suffering of the fawn, and therefore that it is the existence of the latter that we must reject.
Such a Moorean shift can also be used in answer to Rowe’s argument or any other argument for the existence of such suffering. If senseless suffering is incompatible with God, and God exists, then there is no senseless suffering, and therefore there must be an explanation for why he allows such things as the murder of a five-year old. Similarly, if the fawn’s pain is incompatible with God, then according to this argument it must be the case that the fawn does not experience it. However, as we have already seen, there is a problem with maintaining that the existence of God is more certain than such things. A perfect being, with supreme power and knowledge, is not the sort of entity for which we have any good evidence. That a brutal murder cannot be justified does, on the other hand, seem fairly certain. And that animals who have been burned in a forest fire experience great pain is, if anything, even more obviously true. Therefore, given these facts, the most reasonable conclusion is that there is senseless suffering. If so, then God does not exist.












Bibliography


Craig, William Lane, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. God?: A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Frances, Bryan. Gratuitous Suffering and the Problem of Evil: A Comprehensive Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel, Michael Bergmann, and William L. Rowe. “An Exchange on the Problem of Evil.” In William L. Rowe, ed. God and the Problem of Evil. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2001.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel, and Frances Howard-Snyder. “Is Theism Compatible with Gratuitous Evil?” American Philosophical Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1999): 115-30.
Peterson, Michael. Reason and Religious Belief, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Rowe, William L. “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism.” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 335-41.
Trakakis, Nick. The God Beyond Belief: In Defense of William Rowe’s Evidential Argument from Evil. Dordrecht: Springer, 2007.
Van Inwagen, Peter. “The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence.” In William L. Rowe, ed. God and the Problem of Evil. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2001.
Wykstra, Stephen. “The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of ‘Appearance’.” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 16 (1984): 73-93.


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the reality of senseless suffering (link)

The following was originally intended for John Loftus's book God and Horrendous Suffering, but retracted by me after several changes to it that I did not approve of were forced on it by a reviewer (e.g., he insisted that the traditional definition of "libertarian free will" not be used so as to accommodate the fact that a handful of philosophers - for reasons I disagree with - no longer use that definition).

It has now been posted (as close to originally written as I could remember) on Loftus's blog site:

​www.debunking-christianity.com/2023/10/the-reality-of-senseless-or-gratuitous.html

CAN ATHEISTS CRITICIZE GOD ON MORAL GROUNDS?

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity ]

“In the minds of Christian apologists, atheists cannot rationally criticize the Christian god for immoral behavior if an objective moral standard does not exist. I haven't seen a good atheist comeback on this issue. Does anyone have a good, concise, bullet-proof comeback?” — Gary M.

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The underlying argument here is that one cannot justifiably criticize something on moral grounds unless one accepts an objective moral standard; that only God provides such a standard; and that therefore atheists cannot consistently claim that the biblical God is immoral — not even when he commands genocide.

The idea that objective moral values depend on God is something that can easily be disputed, of course, and many have done so. That only God can be the basis of morality — and even that God can be a basis of morality — needs to be argued for before the above claim can be taken seriously.

There is, however, another assumption here that isn't quite as obvious, and which allows for an even easier objection to the argument. This is the idea that one cannot criticize something on moral grounds unless one believes in an objective standard of value. But that is a mistake, and there are at least two reasons why it's a mistake.

To begin with, anyone criticizing the biblical God may claim that she is presenting a problem that's internal to the Christian worldview. That is, she may say that, though she does not herself believe in the existence of objective values, the Christian certainly does, and the problem is that the Christian cannot consistently accept the immoral parts of the Bible. That this is a valid criticism can be seen from the fact that the question of apparent biblical evil is something discussed by the religious amongst themselves. This shows that, given their worldview, there is a difficulty here.

The second reason the above is wrong is more important, however. Christians who make the above argument assume that one who does not believe in an objective standard cannot reasonably consider anything to be morally right or wrong. But the fact is that there is a third alternative between, on the one hand, believing in objective values and, on the other, being a nihilist. Obviously, if I believe that values are subjective, I still believe in values — namely, subjective ones! Thus it is simply not the case that I should stop objecting to things I regard as immoral.

I have moral views which say that (for instance) torturing sentient beings for fun is always wrong. I may not believe that there is a fact, discoverable by science or by philosophical analysis, that corresponds to the statement “torturing sentient beings for fun is always wrong,” but that doesn't mean I wouldn't oppose such an action. In fact, I would oppose it with every fiber of my being.

Nor is this merely my subjective opinion. There is actually a great deal of intersubjective agreement on such issues. The vast majority of us are opposed to murder and rape, for example. And it is this kind of intersubjective agreement that allows us as individuals to intelligibly communicate with one another regarding moral questions. Thus, when someone claims that God is good, they presumably intend to say, among other things, that God does not approve of rape and genocide. It follows that the question of God's goodness, as that claim is usually understood, can be meaningfully discussed on a subjectivist understanding of morality. The supposed objectivity of values has nothing to do with it.

The religious will probably keep making the above argument until the Second Coming — in other words, forever — but the simple fact is that they're wrong to do so.


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FESER'S "THE LAST SUPERSTITION"

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity ]

Lately, there's been quite a bit of talk here regarding Edward Feser's Five Proofs of the Existence of God. It might therefore be interesting to also consider an earlier work of his which covers some of the same ground, The Last Superstition. (The real reason I'm writing this, though, is that I haven't read Five Proofs, but just finished Superstition.) Billed as an answer to the New Atheism, Feser's earlier book is in reality a condemnation of pretty much all things modern — where by “modern” what is meant is everything since the days of Hobbes and Descartes. Feser regards the Enlightenment and all that followed as a disaster for humanity, and actually seems to regret the fact that we no longer live in medieval times. As one example of where he's coming from, consider what he says about Kant. He doesn't find everything about the old German professor bad: “His views on sexual morality and the death penalty, for example, are totally reactionary; that is to say, they are correct” (216-7). However, Kant's insistence on the autonomy of the individual and on treating persons as ends-in-themselves (as opposed to treating them as mere means), are, he says, “gruesome fortune-cookie expressions of modern man's self-worship” (219). (As Dave Barry used to say, I swear I'm not making this up. Feser really appears to find individualism repulsive.)

The central argument of The Last Superstition is that the moderns made a fatal mistake in abandoning Aristotelianism, and in particular the kind of teleological explanations found in that philosophy. It is this, according to Feser, that led to such things as abortion rights, gay marriage, “scientism and hyper-rationalism” (whatever he means by the latter), and the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century that murdered people by the millions (51). However, what Feser thinks of as Aristotelianism is actually Thomism. He doesn't so much defend Aristotle's views, he defends Aquinas's interpretation of them — or maybe it's actually Feser's interpretation of Aquinas's interpretation. I say this because he gets Aristotle wrong in at least one very important respect, as we'll see.

But first, a little bit about Aristotle's views and Feser's argument.

Aristotle thought that there are four different possible types of explanation for why things are the way they are. These are the “four causes” you've probably heard about — the material cause (that out of which something is made), the formal cause (the form or pattern it takes), the efficient cause (what brings it about), and the final cause (what its goal, purpose or end is). The modern view of causation is similar to efficient causation, so the other three may sound strange. However, one can understand what Aristotle was getting at by keeping in mind that his four causes were about the ways one can answer “why” questions about things. So, for instance, as an answer to the question “why do ducks have webbed feet?”, one might say “because it allows them to swim better.” That's an explanation in terms of a final cause. So far, no problem. Where Aristotle went wrong was in thinking that there were purposes of this sort in nature — in other words, that explanations of this type get to the bottom of things.

With the scientific revolution, teleological explanations came to be regarded as non-fundamental. The modern scientific worldview accounts for ducks' webbed feet, and everything else, by just explaining how they came to be. More importantly, these explanations do away with any need to postulate purpose or goals to nature. Natural selection shows how things like webbed feet (which serve the purpose of swimming), hearts (which serve the purpose of pumping blood), and so on, evolved without supposing that anything or anyone was “trying to accomplish” (in any sense of the word) those purposes. To put it another way, natural selection is blind; it doesn't have any ends in mind. It just happens — though of course what ends up happening ends up serving all sorts of purposes for the organisms involved.

It is this modern scientific worldview that Feser vehemently opposes (though that's putting it mildly). One reason he does so is that he thinks no one ever showed that final causes don't exist. Rather, early modern philosophers just decided to replace Aristotle's four causes with the modern concept of causation (by stipulation, he claims), and later their decision mistakenly came to be regarded as a discovery. Thus, there is no reason to accept the change. But that's a silly claim. What the scientific revolution did was provide a different type of explanation from the kinds used by Aristotle, one which accounted for everything that needed to be explained without postulating anything like goals or purposes to nature. And it makes no sense to postulate the existence of something that one does not need in one's explanations. That's why final causes are no longer used in science.

But Feser has another main reason for disagreeing with the modern view. Abandoning the four causes “created a number of serious philosophical problems that have never been settled to this day” (72). These include the mind-body problem, the free-will problem, the problem of induction, skepticism, the problem of grounding morality, etc., etc. However, the idea that the only possible solution to these problems is Aristotelianism (and in most cases, even the idea that it is a good solution) is obviously absurd. For example, with regards to the first, Feser argues that the rejection of Aristotelianism leaves only two basic alternatives: something like Descartes's dualism (which, using a common objection, he says is untenable because it makes the interaction between mind and body utterly mysterious) or the “immoralist and irrationalist” view of materialism (which he says inevitably leads to the rejection of the mind). But he's wrong on both counts. It's false that materialism “implicitly denies that [the mind] exists” (195). And, even though I'm no Cartesian dualist, I think the objection that it makes mind-body interaction mysterious, even though it's a common objection, is weak. (The fact that something is mysterious, or unlike anything else we observe, does not mean it cannot be real. If Descartes's view were correct, then that would just mean that the mind and body interact in a way that's different from any other type of causal interaction we know of, a way that we do not yet understand.)

The change from teleological explanation to scientific causal explanation is the most important difference between the Aristotelian-Thomistic and the modern worldviews, so it's not surprising that Feser discusses the rejection of final causation more than the others. It is here, however, that Feser gets Aristotle wrong. This is more than a little ironic, given how he criticizes others for their lack of knowledge. He pokes fun at Dawkins and Dennett, in particular, for their ignorance of Aquinas. He also claims that many contemporary philosophers completely misunderstand Aristotle. These philosophers, he says, suppose that when Aristotle ascribed final causes to nature, he was claiming that inanimate objects have intentions and desires, as if “the moon is consciously trying to go around the sun, or... fire wants to produce heat” (70). I don't know where Feser got that impression; I've never once heard any philosopher claim anything of the sort. Maybe some put it that way metaphorically. But as far as I've seen, philosophers are well aware that Aristotle meant no such thing. Feser himself, on the other hand, misunderstands one very important aspect of Aristotle's view. And it is central to the most important argument in his book.

That argument is stated on pages 114-6: One cannot make sense out of regularities in nature, he claims, “apart from the notion of final causation, of things being directed toward an end or goal.” In other words, it's because things are “inherently directed toward” specific ends that they behave in a law-like manner. But something cannot be “directed toward an end unless that end exists in an intellect which directs the thing in question toward it.” And the intellect that does so is, of course, God.

If this sounds familiar, it may be because it's really just the fifth of Aquinas's "five ways" of demonstrating the existence of God. However, Feser applies it not only as an answer to atheists, but as a solution to the problem of induction. Without final causation, he claims, there is no explanation for why the moon goes around the earth in a predictable manner. It could just as easily do anything else (which is why Hume, who rejected Aristotle's philosophy, thought there was a problem here). Feser is therefore arguing that all natural regularities, every causal process that can be identified by science, is dependent on final causation. But that of course means that every event, or at the very least every macroscopic event, must have a final cause. And yet, that's not what Aristotle held.

You don't have to take my word for it. The entry on “Aristotle on Causality” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that “Aristotle is not committed to the view that everything has all four kinds of causes. Rather, his view is that a scientific explanation requires up to four kinds of causes” (emphasis added). According to that article, Aristotle gave the example of a lunar eclipse as something lacking a final cause. Similarly, in Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction, author Jonathan Barnes quotes the ancient philosopher himself saying that there is “no reason for seeking a final cause in all cases,” and mentions the fact that Book V of Generation of Animals “is entirely devoted to... non-purposeful [that is, lacking final causation] parts” of animals (118). Now, this is a problem for Feser. For those animal parts that lack a purpose (e.g., vestigial organs) nevertheless undergo causation in a regular, law-like manner, just like everything else. Likewise for lunar eclipses.

Wherever Feser got his ideas from, then, it certainly wasn't from Aristotle. Maybe it was from Aquinas, though I'm not sure (like Dawkins and Dennett, I'm pretty ignorant about old St. Thomas). But what's worse is that Aristotle's view goes against most of what Feser claims in his book. If Aristotle didn't believe final causation applies to everything — and he clearly didn't — then on Feser's view it follows that he had no explanation for the lawful behavior of nature, since that is found even in those things lacking final causation. It also means that Feser can no longer claim Aristotelianism is the answer to all of the problems of philosophy. Finally, it means that Feser's entire argument against atheists, in spite of the detour he takes through Aristotle's philosophy, really boils down to Aquinas's fifth way. In other words, it consists of the claim that the only way to account for laws of nature is to suppose that a God is responsible for them — a claim for which Feser provides no support beyond stating that, otherwise, things would have no reason for behaving in a regular, predictable manner.

RAUSER'S MOOREAN SHIFT

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity ]

[Note: I watched some of a recent online interview with Dr. Randal Rauser — just enough to get the gist — and wrote the following about his argument this morning. I wasn't aware that his debate with Loftus was already tonight. Maybe the following will be useful for those who watch it. I should also add that there may be additional details to Rauser's argument that this doesn't cover.]

In the book God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist (p. 124), William Lane Craig replies to the argument:

If God exists, gratuitous suffering does not exist
Gratuitous suffering exists
Therefore, God does not exist

by means of a so-called “Moorean shift,” in this case by arguing instead:

If God exists, gratuitous suffering does not exist
God exists
Therefore, gratuitous suffering does not exist.

(This is called a Moorean shift after the British philosopher G. E. Moore, who famously turned arguments for philosophical skepticism — e.g., that you might be a brain in a vat — around in this manner.)

What Craig is doing is pointing out that one can deny a premise of an argument if doing so seems more reasonable than accepting its conclusion. He thinks the existence of God is more certain than that of gratuitous suffering. Therefore, rather than accepting the conclusion that God does not exist, he finds it more reasonable to deny the claim that gratuitous suffering exists. Of course, we can easily disagree with Craig's use of this strategy here. The existence of gratuitous suffering (suffering that is morally unjustified and which therefore an all-powerful and perfectly good being would not allow) seems far more certain than the existence of the being himself. So there are good and bad uses of this strategy.

Randall Rauser is in effect making the same kind of move with respect to the question of biblical genocide. His central claim is that our moral intuitions tell us that a good God would never command genocide, and that therefore we must interpret passages in the Bible that appear to show he did so some other way. What he is doing, then, amounts to answering the argument which states that on the Christian worldview:

What the Bible says about God's commands is true
In the Bible, it says God commanded genocide
Therefore, God commanded genocide

by instead arguing:

What the Bible says about God's commands is true
God would never command genocide
Therefore, it does not say that God commanded genocide in the Bible.

The question, then, is whether Rauser's use of the strategy is reasonable. His claim can succeed only if it makes more sense to accept the second premise in the above argument than the second premise in the previous one. And this is exactly what Rauser believes. God, in his view, is the perfectly good Jesus, who would never ask someone to do anything evil. Rauser is therefore absolutely certain about the premise “God would never command genocide.”

Now, the premise which states that in the Bible God did command it does seem pretty certain too, of course. After all, one can read words to that effect in Deuteronomy 20:16-18 and elsewhere. But Rauser argues that, contrary to appearances, the words there must not mean what they say. To suppose they do is inconsistent with the absolutely certain principle that God would never command such a thing — hence his explanation that perhaps those words are hyperbole, or even that they are irony meant to imply the exact opposite of what they say.

The first thing to note about Rauser's argument is that it cannot have any force against someone who does not accept that the Bible is the word of a perfectly good God. Obviously, the nonbeliever's claim is not that there is a God and that he commanded genocide; it is simply that the character referred to as “God” in the Bible commanded genocide. And there is nothing unbelievable about the claim that an ancient people's mythological deity did such a thing. Seen this way, the claim “God would never command genocide” isn't at all certain.

Rauser's argument might best be interpreted as aimed at believers who are struggling with those difficult biblical passages. It is applicable to atheists only as a way to defend the internal consistency of the Christian worldview. But even seen this way the argument is extremely weak. It is much more reasonable (though still problematic) for a believer to suppose that the words attributed to God in those passages aren't actually God's words than to interpret them the way Rauser does. The idea that the passages do not mean what they say reeks of desperation. And there are other problems with his overall argument. His main reason for claiming God's perfection and the impossibility of God-commanded genocide is the supposed perfection of Jesus. Thus, in God or Godless?, he says that “Jesus's whole ministry was directed against the in-group/out-group dichotomies that make evils like genocide possible” (p. 58). But the biblical Jesus wasn't perfect, and Rauser's claim is simply false. In Matthew 15:22-28, for example, Jesus refers to Canaanites as dogs, and initially refuses to heal a Canaanite woman's daughter. That doesn't sound like the Jesus Rauser believes in. One might even argue instead that Jesus's attitude toward the Canaanites goes some way toward explaining the genocide commands. For a believer, that is a more honest, even if more troubling, way of arguing for the internal consistency of scripture.

April 1st POST

​I'm here today to announce my conversion to Christianity. For several years now, I've been blogging at Debunking Christianity, and before that at my own site, arguing against what up until recently I saw as irrational beliefs. But last night, God spoke to me, and I am now saved! 

It's not that I hadn't looked for Jesus before. In fact, I spent several years trying to find Him; I searched high and low, everywhere I went; I went to the famous "Chicken Church" just outside of Tampa (see picture above) — after going to a Church's Chicken by mistake (stupid GPS); I looked in lost and found boxes, under the couch cushions, and on every piece of toast I made; I even read The Bible for Dummies from cover to cover. But until yesterday, I had never heard that all I had to do was ask God to reveal Himself, and He would. So I tried it, and much to my surprise, He came into my heart.

​At first, I thought it was just heartburn, but then I heard a voice! And this wasn't like most of the voices I hear in my head. This one was deep and well-modulated, more James Earl Jones than Morgan Freeman. So I immediately knew it was God. I fell down on my knees (though, to be perfectly honest, the scotch I was drinking at the time might have had something to do with that) and began speaking in tongues.

After telling me to shut the hell up, He told me that He loved me, quickly adding, “but I'm not gay — that would be a sin.” Which was a big relief!

So now I'm here to tell all of you to repent, lest you end up in the eternal Hellfire prepared for Satan and his minions, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, followed by (the truly horrible part) dentist appointments to fix those teeth! Forever and ever. Amen.


[An April Fool's joke originally published at  Debunking Christianity  (and in imitation of some of the proselytizers who frequent the site)]
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ON FINDING JESUS

I'm here today to announce my conversion to Christianity. For several years now, I've been blogging at Debunking Christianity, and before that at my own site, arguing against what up until recently I saw as irrational beliefs. But last night, God spoke to me, and I am now saved. Praise the Lord!

It's not that I hadn't looked for Jesus before. In fact, I spent several years trying to find Him; I searched high and low, everywhere I went; I went to the famous "Chicken Church" just outside of Tampa (see picture) — after going to a Church's Chicken by mistake (stupid GPS); I looked in lost and found boxes, under the couch cushions, and on every piece of toast I made; I even read The Bible for Dummies from cover to cover. But until yesterday, I had never heard that all I had to do was ask God to reveal Himself, and He would. So I tried it, and much to my surprise, He came into my heart.

​At first, I thought it was just heartburn, but then I heard a voice! And this wasn't like most of the voices I hear in my head. This one was deep and well-modulated, more James Earl Jones than Morgan Freeman. So I immediately knew it was God. I fell down on my knees (though, to be perfectly honest, the scotch I was drinking at the time might have had something to do with that) and began speaking in tongues.

After telling me to shut the fuck up, He told me that He loved me, quickly adding, “but I'm not gay — that would be a sin.” Which was a big relief!

So now I'm here to tell all of you to repent, lest you end up in the eternal Hellfire prepared for Satan and his minions, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, followed by (the truly horrible part) dentist appointments to fix those teeth! Forever and ever. Amen.

God bless!



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity ]

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THE PARADOXES OF DENYING INFINITY

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity ]

It is common for theists — especially those familiar with the Kalam Cosmological Argument and William Lane Craig's defense of it — to deny the existence of actual infinities. And since the question of infinity recently came up in one of the comment threads at Debunking Christianity, I thought I'd re-publish an old blog post on this, with minor modifications.

It consists of two parts — the main blog post, plus (for those who want to delve a bit deeper into the issue) an addendum on the solution to Zeno's paradox:



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Although it may be surprising, no claim I've made has been criticized more by the religious than the claim that there are actual infinities. Every time I so much as mention infinity, someone goes out of their way to "inform" me of the errors of my ways. And yet there appear to be clear cases of infinity all around us. For example, every time you move, you go through an infinite number of subintervals: You first go half of the way, then 3/4 of the way, followed by 7/8, 15/16, and so on, covering what is obviously an infinite series. Nevertheless, you are able to complete the motion.

Using this as an example of an actual infinity raises the question of Zeno's paradox, however, and some of the aforementioned critics have done just that. According to Zeno, since this series of intervals never ends — since there are an actual infinite number of them between any two points A and B — one can never go from A to B.

Now, other than agreeing with Zeno that all motion is an illusion, there are two basic alternatives available to us here. The first is to agree that there are an infinite number of intervals but to claim that we can in fact move across all of them. The other is to deny that there are an infinite number of intervals.

It is often said that an infinite series is one that by definition cannot be completed, since (after all) it has no end. But that isn't the case. Consider the principal claim that the religious finitists (i.e., infinity deniers) insist on making, namely that the past cannot be infinite. They do so by arguing that an infinite series of events could not have already taken place, as that would mean it has been completed. But why can't an infinite series of past events occur given an infinite amount of time? If there is a time for each event, and there are an infinite number of times (or moments), then there can be an infinite number of events. (My favorite example here is one that is credited to Wittgenstein: imagine coming across someone who says “...4, 3, 2, 1, 0. Finished!” and then explains he has been counting backwards from eternity.)

We can resolve Zeno's paradox, it seems to me, once we see how the infinite series that it involves is also one that can be completed. However, the solution is a bit complicated, so I'll leave it to the end of this post. First, I want to consider the other alternative, that of the finitists.

There is more than one way to be a finitist about the number of intervals in a line segment, but the one that appears to be favored by the religious is to argue that the number of subdivisions involved is only potentially, rather than actually, infinite. That is, these individuals claim that there are an infinite number of possible subdivisions in that one could in principle keep dividing a line segment forever. However, since one could never finish the task, there never could be an actual infinite number of intervals there.

The problem with this is that it treats the intervals as something created by our actually dividing the line (at least mentally). That is, it assumes that when one is talking about each part of the line in question (its first half, the 1/4 that follows that, and so on), one is talking about parts that have already been marked off from the rest. But that is not what Zeno's paradox is about. The first half, the one fourth that follows that, and all the other intervals that Zeno is referring to are geometrical parts that are present in the line whether anyone takes notice of them or not. In other words, they are already there. It's true that we could never actually mark off all of them, as it would take forever, but that's irrelevant.

A second way of arguing that a line does not contain an infinite number of intervals is to claim that the line is not infinitely divisible, not even potentially — that is, to claim that there are smallest parts that cannot be divided further even in principle. But that too is highly problematic. For then what one is claiming is that there are segments of a line that are not zero-sized and yet that have no further parts. But if one of these spatial "atoms" isn't zero-sized, that's because there is some distance between one end of it and the other — which in turn means the two ends must be distinct. And that contradicts the claim that it has no parts.

Finitists object to infinity by claiming that it leads to paradoxes. And yet what these examples show is that the rejection of infinity introduces paradoxes as well. One individual I debated online on this topic — a defender of the above potential infinity view — actually maintained that the two halves of a line do not exist until someone divides the line in half. Now, I admit that there are unresolved paradoxes of infinity. Philosophers and mathematicians haven't yet worked out all of the issues on the subject. But I find the existence of infinity paradoxes more acceptable precisely because they involve infinity — a concept that our minds have a hard time grasping. It's very easy for or intuitions to go wrong whenever the infinite is involved. I'm not willing to accept, however, that my intuition that the two halves of a line exist prior to our dividing the line could be wrong!


THE SOLUTION TO ZENO'S PARADOX


It is often claimed that Zeno's paradox is dissolved once we realize that the sum of the infinite series 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + …. is 1. But that would be the solution only if Zeno's claim were that the series does not add up to 1, or that, given that the series is infinite, the distance from A to B must itself be infinite — and that doesn't seem to be what Zeno was claiming. Moreover, even if he was claiming that, it doesn't matter, since we can see a different problem — namely, that in order to reach B (never mind that it is clearly only a finite distance away), one must complete an infinite series. That is what appears impossible.

But it isn't. Above, I claimed that at least some infinite series can in fact be completed. For instance, given an infinite amount of time, an infinite number of events can occur. So some infinite series can be completed given infinite time in which to do so. But in fact it doesn't necessarily take an infinite amount of time. Aristotle pointed out that, obviously, the time it takes to move from A to B can also be divided into its first half, its next fourth, and so on. Thus, there are an infinite number of subintervals of time in which to cover the infinite number of subintervals of length between A and B. The situation is therefore analogous to the one in which an infinite number of events occur in an infinite amount of time: in both cases, there is a time available for each event in question to take place.

Now, this at first may not seem sufficient to solve the paradox. We can imagine Zeno objecting that, just as there is a problem with completing the infinite series of intervals between A and B, there is a problem (given that the span involved contains an infinite number of temporal intervals) with the passage of time from moment T1 to moment T2. But it is easy to answer such an objection. We can begin by noting that the infinite number of subdivisions (whether of temporal or spatial intervals) adds up to the span in question. That is (to consider the spatial case first), we already know that it is the distance between A and B that contains the infinite number of intervals we're discussing. So there is no question about there being a point B, only one about how one can arrive at it. Similarly, we know that it is the span T1 to T2 that has an infinite number of temporal intervals. So once again, there is no question about the existence of T2, only about how it ever can arrive. But now one can see that the above objection really makes no sense. Because for there to be a time T2 (one that is not infinitely in the future) is the same thing as for it to eventually arrive! It is incoherent to claim that there is such a time and to also claim that it can never get here. (It would be as incoherent as to claim that there is a point B and to insist that it is nowhere.) Therefore, Zeno cannot reasonably object that it is impossible for the time between T1 and T2 to transpire. It would be like saying that the distance between A and B does not exist.

(I am not, incidentally, claiming that Zeno wouldn't say that. In fact, as a disciple of Parmenides, he would say precisely this about the distance — and might, faced with the above considerations, say the analogous thing regarding the time span. But none of this is relevant to the paradoxes, which take as their starting point the fact that there are distances and durations, before attempting to show that such an assumption creates a problem.)

Given that T2 will eventually be here, it follows that there is in fact one temporal interval available for moving across each interval between A and B (all the way to and including B). The fact that both the number of line segments and the number of temporal intervals is infinite is no more problematic than the fact that in a universe without a beginning, the number of past events and the number of past moments are both infinite. In both situations, the availability of a time for each event to occur in is all that is needed to avoid paradox.

One final note: Above, I stated that one could never finish the task of dividing the distance between A and B into an infinite number of intervals. However, in principle, someone could in fact do so — just as we can, and do, go through all of these intervals in moving from A to B. The someone in question would simply need to perform the task at an ever increasing rate — e.g., by making the first division in 30 seconds, the second in 15, the third in 7.5, and so on, so as to complete the task in one minute flat. As Bertrand Russell once said, the impossibility of performing an infinite number of tasks in a finite amount of time is merely “medical.” ​
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MONOLATRY

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity ]

It seems obvious that the ancient Israelites were not monotheists, but instead practiced monolatry, the worship of one god combined with a belief in existence of other gods. This is the best explanation of the first commandment's “no other gods before me” as well as of Psalm 86:8's “there is none like you among the gods.” But there are also events described in the Bible that suggest belief in other gods.

One that is particularly interesting is mentioned in the book Bible Prophecy by Tim Callahan:

In 2 Kings 3:27, when Moab is under siege by the Israelites, the king of that city sacrifices his firstborn son to the god Chemosh. As a result, “there came a great wrath upon Israel,” and Moab was spared. Now, why would there be a great wrath upon Israel if the only god in existence were Yahweh? It makes no sense for Yahweh to be angry with the Israelites for what the king of Moab did; if anything, he'd be mad at the king, and give Israel a victory. The obvious implication is that the god Chemosh, happy with the sacrifice, caused Israel's defeat. And yet this account was written by an Israelite, and included in their scriptures. This can only mean that the Israelites believed Chemosh was real. It also implies (even more shockingly) that they believed Chemosh had the power to do something that Yahweh didn't stop — and perhaps was unable to stop.

This is obviously a problem for any fundamentalist who interprets the Bible literally. But it is also a problem for every other modern-day Christian or Jew. Why would the one true God, who didn't want his chosen people to worship other deities, be okay with his followers believing these other deities existed? Worse, why would he allow them to suggest as much in their holy book? Isn't it far more likely that the Israelites were worshipping a false god (just like all the other ancients were), and that the monotheistic God that evolved from that false god is therefore also a fictional entity?

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FAITH AND EQUIVOCATION

[Originally published at  Debunking Christianity ]

Whenever someone is defending faith, or is arguing that faith and reason are compatible, they should be asked which of three common meanings of the term they are thinking of. If the exact meaning of the word isn't made clear, it is almost a given that their claims will deteriorate into a mess of equivocation.

When challenged to provide evidence for the existence of God, most theists reply that their belief is based on faith. This makes it clear that, in this context, “faith” means belief without evidence. This meaning of the word also applies to the claim that faith is needed when the evidence isn't conclusive. Or in other words, when the believer says that reason can only take one so far, and one must make the decision to believe.

The religious often also use this meaning of the word in criticisms of atheists, as when they claim that it takes greater faith to be an atheist, or that atheists believe in materialism on faith. This is when faith is described negatively as “blind faith.” However, when they themselves are accused of believing without evidence, they almost always begin claiming that faith means something like trust instead. They make analogies between having faith in God and someone having faith in their doctor's abilities, or something similar.

Now, one problem with this as an explanation of what is going on when people have religious faith is that trust, when rational, is based on evidence. It is a judgment one makes based on incomplete but hopefully adequate information. But a more serious problem with treating religious faith as if it means trust is that it doesn't make sense when faith is what makes one believe in God. For that faith is itself supposedly faith in God — and obviously one cannot trust God unless one already believes that God exists.

The word is also used in a third sense, to mean a particular doctrine or set of religious beliefs. Now, it should be a simple enough matter to keep this meaning separate from the others, but unfortunately the religious sometimes fail to do even that. For instance, in the introduction to his The Case for Faith, Lee Strobel replies to the claim that faith is believing without evidence by setting out to discover “once and for all whether the Christian faith can stand up to scrutiny.” He doesn't seem to realize that, in defending the Christian doctrine this way, he's not defending believing on faith, but is instead defending believing a particular faith on the basis of evidence. The fact that the word “faith” is used to mean both what one bases one's religious beliefs on, and what the specific contents of those beliefs are, causes Strobel and many others like him to conflate the two ideas. But perhaps this is intentional: For what they want, after all, is to claim both that there is adequate evidence and that one must have faith to believe in God — even though that's a contradiction.

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