This week we are looking at objections from atheists and skeptics regarding the existence of suffering. Let’s dig in.
Some atheists object that if God is truly all-powerful, He would create a world without suffering. But this assumes it is logically possible to do so without creating a world with nothing but robots.
In fact, some Christian philosophers have argued (1) A world with suffering may be preferable to a world without suffering; (2) William Lane Craig has written, “Possibly God could not create a world with this much good but less suffering, and God has good reasons to permit the suffering” (as we saw in yesterday’s post).
Does this mean God cannot be all-powerful? Not at all.
Alvin Plantinga has offered the most thorough and nuanced version of the Christian response in a number of journal articles culminating in God, Freedom and Evil (Eerdmans 1978). He argues that it is logically possible that the world we have is the best possible world given humankind’s freedom to do evil. Thus, it would be logically impossible for God to create another “better” world called for by the skeptics.
God’s inability to do the logically impossible does not diminish His greatness. It is simply silly to say God is not all-powerful if He cannot create a square circle or a married bachelor! This in fact what some philosophers call a “pseudo question” or “pseudo task,” which means it is utter nonsense.
But there is an assumption underlying the atheist’s objections that we have been looking at this week, which is that the primary purpose of life is happiness but is that true?
The Bible teaches that the chief purpose of life is not happiness but the knowledge of God. Again, Dr. William Lane Craig writes, “Much of the suffering in life may be utterly pointless with respect to the goal of producing human happiness; but it may NOT be pointless with respect to producing a deeper knowledge of God.”
Let’s put this in real life perspective. Dr. Craig shares the following story in his book Hard Questions, Real Answers (Crossway, 2003):
“A former colleague of mine used to make it his habit to visit shut-ins in nursing homes in an attempt to bring a bit of cheer and love into their lives. One day he met a woman whom he could never forget [the following is a quote from his colleague]:
‘On this particular day I was walking in a hallway that I had not visited before, looking in vain for a few who were alive enough to receive a flower and a few words of encouragement. This hallway seemed to contain some of the worst cases, strapped onto carts or into wheelchairs and looking completely helpless.
As I neared the end of this hallway, I saw an old woman strapped up in a wheelchair. Her face was an absolute horror. The empty stare and white pupils of her eyes told me that she was blind. The large hearing aid over one ear told me that she was almost deaf. One side of her face was being eaten by cancer. There was a discolored and running sore covering part of one cheek, and it had pushed her nose to one side, dropped one eye, and distorted her jaw so that what should have been the corner of her mouth was the bottom of her mouth. As a consequence, she drooled constantly….I also learned later that this woman was eighty-nine years old and that she had been bedridden, blind, nearly deaf, and alone, for twenty-five years. This was Mabel.
I don’t know why I spoke to her – she looked less likely to respond than most of the people I saw in that hallway. But I put a flower in her hand and said, “Here is a flower for you. Happy Mother’s Day.” She held the flower up to her face and tried to smell it, and then she spoke. And much to my surprise, her words, although somewhat garbled because of her deformity, were obviously produced by a clear mind. She said, “Thank you. It’s lovely. But can I give it to someone else? I can’t see it, you know, I’m blind.”
I said, “Of course,” and I pushed her in her chair back down the hallway to a place where I thought I could find some alert patients. I found one, and I stopped the chair. Mabel held out the flower and said, “Here, this is from Jesus.”
That was when it began to dawn on me that this was not an ordinary human being….Mabel and I became friends over the next few weeks, and I went to see her once or twice a week for the next three years….It was not many weeks before I turned from a sense that I was being helpful to a sense of wonder, and I would go to her with a pen and paper to write down the things she would say….
During one hectic week of final exams I was frustrated because my mind seemed to be pulled in ten directions at once with all of the things that I had to think about. The questions occurred to me, “What does Mabel have to think about – hour after hour, day after day, week after week, not even able to know if it’s day or night?” So I went to her and asked, “Mabel, what do you think about when you lie here?”
And she said, “I think about my Jesus.”
I sat there and thought for a moment about the difficulty, for me, of thinking about Jesus for even five minutes, and I asked, “What do you think about Jesus?” She replied slowly and deliberately as I wrote. And this is what she said:
And then Mabel began to sing an old hymn:
I think Plantinga argued that it was really doubtful there is a such a thing as a “best possible world,” just as there is no such thing as a “best possible island” because we could always imagine one with more dancing girls or palm trees. That said, that doesn’t mean God shouldn’t create a world, nor does it mean that he could have created a world with a significantly more proportion of good than evil than this one given creaturely freedom.
It is interesting to note that he does not argue that worlds where everyone does what is right are logically impossible, but rather they are unfeasible due to the fact that it is possible that everyone makes a bad decision at some point, even though they are free to do otherwise (transworld depravity). This argument requires a notion of libertarian freedom, so it’s actually not a response available to compatibilists except as an appeal to broad logical possibility. If God determinining actions is compatible with decisions being free, then God indeed could have created a world where he determined everyone choose what is right and still be free (if compatibilism is true), but he chose not to.
You are confusing his free will defense (which is compatabalist) with his response to objections to his defense of his version of the ontological argument for the existence of God.
I’m not, though I’m using an example (the island) that is similar. Plantinga is clearly a libertarian, though he claims to be from the Reformed tradition. In God, Freedom, and Evil, he pretty much rejects compatibilistic freedom offhand (his jail illustration). It’s generally accepted that his version of the free will defense excludes theological determinism, which is needed for compatibilism. That can be clearly seen because, otherwise, it makes no sense to say that a world is unfeasible for God because Bob choose Y over X and God cannot determine it that Bob chooses X. If compatibilism is true, God CAN do that without violating freedom.
Isak, he was just here last month and, as far as I know, he continues to affirm foreknowledge and Reformed sotieriology–thus, affirming compatabalism (although it may be argued he rejected a form of it)”. If you want to see how it is possible read DA Carson’s “Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibilty.” Also read Ronald Nash’s helpful summary in “Faith & Reason” and his very good lectures available via RTS (although because of age, some of the lectures have a somewhat poor quality).
I’ve read much of Plantinga, and he does not affirm compatibilism, at least in the way it is classically formulated. He believes an action cannot be free if it is causally determined; that’s not compatibilism simply by definition, though when it comes to foreknowledge, he certainly believes freedom and foreknowledge are compatible. Compatibilist critics of the Free Will Defense have often even complained that his FWD assumes libertarian freedom.
I’ve read Carson’s work; that’s more about seeing the tension of divine sovereignty and human responsibility in Scripture, and it is not a philosophical work (though he tries his hand in it in some sections). I actually thought it was ironic when he espoused compatibilism in the book because he talked about trying to hold the tension without necessarily resolving it, but then he tried to resolve it by resorting to compatibilism. In either case, I’m not sure how that’s germane to this discussion, since we’re talking about whether compatibilism is compatible
with Plantinga’s free will defense, not whether or not compatibilism is actually true.
Isak, the only way to consistently hold foreknowledge is to hold a compatabalist view. Plantinga has been playing with the notion of evolution and this might impact all of this if goes beyond stating it is possibility and affirms it asn actuality but until then… \
Alas, no Arminean has been willing to accept compatibalism yet (as they were predestined yet free to do so)….
Also, I too have read nearly everything Plantinga has written (I’m older than you and have a jump start!). The moment you concede foreknowledge and God as creator, you have stumbled in to the compatabalist field whether you want to admit it or not. But all this will come later when I unpack a few compatabalist arguments courtesy of the late Ronald Nash and a few others. Now go back and read Carson a little more carefully (I.e., with Sportscenter turned off).
Matt, I think you are confusing issues here. One issue has to do with whether people can be free yet causally determined, and THAT is classically what is the debate between compatiblism and libertarianism. It is clear that Plantinga’s Free Will Defense rejects the former; he in fact says so (p. 32 in God, Freedom, and Evil). The other has to do with whether divine foreknowledge and libertarian freedom are compatible. This is something Arminians and other non-Calvinists other than open theists will consistently affirm. This is exactly why Plantinga even resorts to using middle knowledge in his Free Will Defense in the first place. Molinism, championed by Craig, is exactly an attempt to explain libertarian (incompatiblist) free will with divine omniscience.
It is THAT compatibilism, the one that rests upon theological determinism, that is clearly not consistent with Plantinga’s FWD. That’s actually not a controversial thing to say among philosophers; John Feinberg, for example, cheerfully admitted as much.
Isak, I’m sorry but I don’t have the time or space to get that thick into the weeds with you right now. You will have to wait until I have time to post my stuff on compatabalism later but it suffice to say that you are lumping hard deteminism in with compatabilism and what Plantinga says is logically possible and what is actual and FYI molinism has taken off like a wingless bat because it biblically untenable. I love you and look forward to a discussion when I have the time and space. Now please go find a girl or something.
I don’t think I am; I’m talking about a pretty bare bones compatibilism that either rests on hard or soft determinism, but I will await your post on that
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Why would an Atheist believe she should be euthanized? I disagree. And I wouldn’t assume that Atheists believe the purpose of life is happiness because they don’t necessarily believe there IS a purpose to life. If there is no god then there is no meaning however we are free to create our own meaning. Suffering is thus subjective and it is up to the person themselves to decide if their life is worth living.
Not sure if you’ve ever read anything by Albert Camus but he speaks to this very topic. He consinders that, since life is meaningless and life is full of suffering, then why would we endure this pointless suffering. Why not commit suicide? He asserts that this may be the logical option. However he then delves into the story of Sisyphus, who offended the gods and was banished to an eternity of rolling a rock up a mountain, only to have it roll back down once he accomplished the task. He compares this to our lives then states that what makes his story tragic is that Sisyphus is conscious of the meaningless of his fate, as would be the Atheist. However, rather than seeing Sisyphus as being a sad & defeated person, he views him as being happy. He finds that it doesn’t matter that life has no predetermined meaning. Our ability to create our own fate can bring great joy.
He writes, “This universe henseforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy”.
I’m sure not all Atheists would agree with this just as not all Christians share the same beliefs. However, being an Atheist doesn’t mean one doesn’t value life or believe suffering must be pointless. They may simply find that, due to no predetermined meaning, they have the freedom to create their own meaning. And they may find that just as valuable & fulfilling as Christians do in abiding by the meaning they find in the bible.
Sorry if this is a rambling mess. I’m writing on the fly and my phone kept messing up. Interesting comments above btw. Although, I could hardly make heads or tails out of it since I don’t know what your talking about…lol. I may be out of my league in this forum.
Lynn, when I was an atheist I read Camus and Sartre, etc. They argued that in the absence of meaning or purpose that the only object worth pursuing in life is happiness. If you think about it, this makes sense. But what happens when a society is based on nothing but such utlitarian values? As I will argue later from history–a lot!
In fact, the problem with their argument is manifold and will be dealt with in a little more depth when I get to the moral argument, the problem of consciousness and several posts on science and religion. But, for now, dealing with the article at hand, the argument that Mabel should be euthenized is made by an atheist philosopher named Pete Singer who teaches at Princeton. He argues that a naturalist like himself can only be philosophically consistent by arguing that since we are just higher order animals, there is no reason NOT to euthenize someone in pain or is unproductive. He also argues that rape should be viewed as natural and that there is no such thing as good or evil because there is no higher authority than humankind and any statement of morality is really just the opinion of a finite creature. Since we are just animals, Singer argues we should not look at euthenizing someone like Mabel any differently than we look at putting a lame dog to sleep.
Many of his fellow atheists are repusled by Singer’s arguments but, as many philosophers have demonstrated (and I will visit later on), Singer is really just following a purely naturalisitc worldview to its logical conclusion. More later. Work now. Blessings,
It took me forever to reply! Sorry. Anyhoo….I too have read quite a bit of Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche and others (including those in Psychology like Frankl) and never got the impression they thought happiness was what people ought to pursue. Of course, I haven’t read every book by them or on Existentialism so perhaps I’ve missed something.
I guess part of my issue here is that I get the feeling you believe Atheists don’t value human life. I’m not sure why anyone would believe that an Atheist would think Mabel has no value. She gets to determine the value of her own life. Pete Singer isn’t the spokesperson for Atheists. People have different views…just like Christians. You’ve mentioned that you were once an Atheist. At that time, would you have thought Mabel should be euthanized?
Lynn, Singer has simply taken the argument to its logical conclusion. When I was an atheist, I simply refused to acknowledge the obvious. Anyone who argues otherwise is simply being arbitrary, which is why Singer is such an embarrassment but is still the most logically consistent atheist philosopher working today.