continued...
The next version of the problem of evil is the inductive problem of evil. While the deductive and gratuitous problem of evil argue that God cannot exist given the amount of evil in the world, the inductive problem of evil makes a more modest claim. It argues, not that God's existence is impossible, but that God's existence is unlikely. While we can't rule out the possibility that there's a good reason for evil, the amount of evil in the world does seem to make it improbable that there's any good reason for all of it. That makes God's existence improbable.
Since the inductive argument is based on probability, other factors have to be taken into account. Before we can say that God's existence is improbable, we have to consider all the facts and weight them against each other. While the existence of evil may count AGAINST God's existence, there are other things which count FOR God's existence. The evil in the world, by itself, may make God's existence improbable, but when all the facts are taken into account, not just evil, then God's existence may NOT be improbable after all. We have to weigh these things against each other. Although I'm not going to go into arguments for the existence of God right now, I'll just tell you that I think the arguments for God's existence far outweigh the inductive problem of evil. So I would think God's existence is more likely than not even if I thought evil made God's existence less likely than it would be if there were no evil. Do you see how this all goes back to my epistemology I explained in my first emais? I simply weigh the evidence and incline my belief in the direction of the stronger case.
There's one more argument I have that I think answers every version of the problem of evil.
[deleting stuff]
Sam
Conversations with Angie: update
6 comments:
Steve,
The approach I'm taking in the inductive problem of evil is the common sense approach all of us use to solve problems in our ordinary lives. For example, suppose you want to know if your girlfriend is cheating on you. On the one hand, you might have somebody telling you they've seen her with other guys, strange phone numbers on her caller ID, etc. All of these things may lend support to the notion that she's cheating on you.
But on the other hand, you know she's a very decent person, it isn't unusual for her to have male friends, and perhaps there's an explanation for the phone numbers that you just haven't thought of.
The object isn't to look and see which list is longer, but rather, which case is stronger--the case for or against her cheating on you. Suppose you know her to be such a trust-worthy person that you've decided she could not cheat on you. What, then, do you make of the person who says they SAW her cheating on you?
Well, you don't need to answer that question before you're justified in thinking your girlfriend did not cheat on you. Several scenarios are possible. Maybe the person is lying. Maybe they misunderstood what they saw. Or maybe there's some other explanation you just haven't thought of.
My approach to dealing with the inductive argument against God is the same. I look at the case for and the case against, and I incline my belief to the stronger case. That doesn't require me to be able to answer every argument from the contrary side.
On the other hand, you argue that "If the claim 'god exists' is to survive scrutiny, we must rule out (or otherwise deal with) each conflicting piece of evidence." By the same reasoning, one might say, "If the claim 'god does not exist' is to survive scrutiny, we must rule out (or otherwise deal with) each conflicting piece of evidence." If both of these claims are true, then nobody is in any position to have an opinion on the existence of God unless they have a pretty sophisticated education in philosophy, because only then will a person have encountered and dealt with every argument for God as well as every argument against God in the entire history of philosophy.
You say that by appealing to God transcending our understanding, that we render our world religions meaningless. It seems to me, though, that we can know some things about God even if we don't know EVERYTHING about God. After all, I don't know everything about my girlfriend. There are some things about her that I just don't understand. But does it follow that there's NOTHING about her I understand? Of course not! Likewise, with God, there are many things I don't understand, but that doesn't mean there is NOTHING I understand.
Steve,
I agree that the two claims about your girlfriend can't both be true. But in your scenario, it isn't necessary to disprove my friend's claim before I'm justified in believing my girlfriend's claim. If I have what seem to me to be good reasons to think my girlfriend is telling the truth, I may be at a loss as to why my friend is telling me he saw her at a bar. I'm sure I'd spend some time trying to come up with possibilities. Maybe he saw somebody who LOOKS like her, maybe he's lying, etc. Maybe I can't think of any explanation at all. But my failure to come up with an explanation doesn't obligate me to doubt my girlfriend's honesty.
In the same way, if I have what seem to me to be good reasons to think there is a God, I may puzzle over the existence of evil all day, never knowing why a good God would create such a world, and it may even cause me to hold my belief in God with less conviction, but the inductive argument from evil is just not strong enough to overcome the reasons I have for thinking there is a God.
Usually, the way proofs for God's existence work is by starting with some minimal definition that entails a being with certain properties (e.g. personhood, power, knowledge, goodness, immateriality, eternality, etc.), or attributing some funtion such as creation, revelation, miracles, etc. The argument is designed to show that a being with those properties exists. For example, if God is defined as a being with the properties X, Y, and Z, and if some argument that shows a being to exist with the properties X, Y, and Z, then it follows that the God that has been defined exists.
Another way is to begin with arguments that show some being with some properties exist, and then, based on those properties and traditional understandings of what it means to be a god, one might say that some god exists, and has these properties.
"God" is not hard to define at all. In fact, the reason we know the Hindu idea of God is different than the Christian idea of God is precisely because both have defined "God" in particular ways. In the Hindu idea of God, there is no distinction between creation and creator. In the Christian idea of God, there is a radical distinction between creation and creator.
Minimally, the Christian definition of God is a being who is all powerful, all knowing, and all good, who is eternal, and who created the universe. If it happens that no such being exists, then the Christian God does not exist. Maybe some god exists, but not the Christian one.
One might give an ostensive definition of God in the same way one might give an ostensive definition of a human. You might define a person as the one who wrote some book, or the one who built some really cool bow. Likewise, God may be ostensively defined as the one who spoke to Moses on the mountain, or the one who raised Jesus from the dead.
Sam
Steve,
When I consider what kind of god exists--a Hindu God, a Christian God, or whatever--I look at the arguments. It simply doesn't follow that just because everybody has a different idea of God, that nobody has a correct idea about God. You have to look at the merits of the arguments to determine that. I get the impression that you think just because two people disagree on something that neither knows the truth.
You're right that I haven't given any arguments for God's existence. That's beyond the scope of this particular blog.
Sam
Steve,
I think you're articulating your views just fine, though I could be having some misunderstandings.
The mere fact that somebody else has a different opinion than me doesn't shake my beliefs. For example, I know that if two claims contradict each other, they can't both be true. (And you seem to agree with that.) But there are people with PhD's in philosophy teaching in college who think we're both wrong. The fact that there are some people out there who don't believe in logic doesn't shake my belief in logic at all.
So why should I have my belief in God shaken just because there's people out there who disagree with me? The reason I don't think the Hindus have it right is because Hinduism is an irrational religion that affirms contradictions. Their concept of God is, in many ways, contradictory. For example, they believe God is both personal and not personal. Their God is not only non-existent, but it's not even POSSIBLE for their God to exist since the definition of their God is inherently contradictory.
If you have looked at the arguments for the Christian God and found them completely unpursuasive, then I can understand your response. IT doesn't look to you like the strength of the arguments give us any warrant in having any more confidence in our own religion than in Hinduism. So our disagreement may be due simply to the fact that I find the arguments pursuasive, and you don't. Since I find the arguments pursuasive, I think I am warranted in saying Christianity is true and Hinduism is not.
That doesn't mean that I'm 100% sure that Christianity is true. I admit that I could be wrong. It just doesn't seem to me that I am.
Think about this for a second. You and I are having some sort of disagreement right now, right? I think a person can be rationally justified in thinking his religion is true, and you think they cannot be rationally justified in thinking their religion is true. Does the mere fact that I have a different opinion than you cause you to throw up your hands and says, "Well I guess neither of us knows whether people can be rationally justified in thinking their religion is true"?
Sam
Steve,
I don't see how even an outsider can think all religions proclaim the same thing. I mean if you think about it, excluding Christianity, I'm an outsider to every other religion, and I know good and well that Wicca, Isalm, and Buddhism are all very different religions. If all religions proclaimed the same thing, I don't see how you could distinguish them. They'd all basically be the same religion.
There was a time when I had the idea (don't know where I got the idea) that all religions are basically saying the same thing in different words, but since I've learned a little more about these religions, I've discovered that I was wrong.
For me, religions are like philosophical points of view. On just about any question you might have in philosophy, there are a multitude of different perspective. But the mere fact that there are so many opinions shouldn't prevent me from having my own opinion. For example, Does the external world exist, or is it just an illusion or a dream or something? Well, some people say it's real, and some people say it isn't. Even without being able to prove an answer to the question one way or another, it seems to me that it is far more reasonable to think the external world is real than to think it isn't. Even people who deny the external world live as if they think it's real.
But there are some viewpoints that I don't think are even worthy of consideration, because we are in a position not just to think that they are wrong, but to know with absolute certainty that they are wrong. Take the view on logic for example. I know with absolute certainty that the law of non-contradiction is true. If somebody comes along and tells me that it's not true, that it's a matter of personal preference, western bias, or whatever, I'm just not going to take him seriously.
There are probably thousands of religions out there if you count all the tribal practices and the everything. So it would seem bewildering to an outsider to be in a situation to have to sift through ALL of them to see if ANY of them is true. But I think it's very easy to at least weed out a big chunk of them without really having to know that much about them. There are some of them that are plainly irrational. By "irrational," I don't just mean they believe things I think are crazy or unbelievable. I mean something more specific. I mean they knowingly affirm contradictions or reject logic to some degree. Among the religions that fall into this category are Hinduism, some forms of Buddhism (especially Zen, but also Mahayana), some forms of Wicca, New Ageism. Any religion that denies the existence of objective truths, the existence of themselves, or other self-refuting notions can also be dismissed as irrational.
The test of logic really narrows the scope and makes things a lot easier. One of the best ways to refute any point of view, including religious, is to demonstrate that it affirms a contradiction. One of the best arguments against orthodox Christianity is that it affirms a contradiction--namely that Jesus is fully God and also fully man. If that's a contradiction, then any form of Christianity that subscribes to the incarnation is false. But Christians have never admited that this is a contradiction, and many Christian philosophers have tried to reconcile the two claims to demonstrate there is no contradiction. The reason Christians even bother with such efforts is because Christianity is a rational religion that fully embraces the laws of logic. Christians know that if there is a contradiction in their own worldview that their worldview is wrong one way or another. Contrast that to the famous Mayahan Buddhist, Nagarjuna, who wrote a whole book against logic. Do you think Nagarjuna would care if somebody pointed out a contradiction in his worldview?
I would highly recommend getting Ronald Nash's book, Worldviews in Conflict.
Sam
Steve,
I don't know enough about tribal religions to say whether they're illogical or not. I was just providing a way to narrow the scope. There are some religions that are easily dismissed, because they are plainly irrational.
Of course once you weed out the nonsense, it is a little more difficult to figure out which religion (if any) is true among those that are left.
I think you made a false dichotomy when you said it is circumstances and not logic that dictates our choices. Let me give an illustration to make my point. If I had been born in another place at another time, I might have believed the earth was flat. The only reason I believe the earth is round is because of where and when I live. So, you might say that I believe the earth is round because of circumstances, and not reason or evidence. But you can clearly see that this is a false dichotomy.
Sam
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