This week we’re looking at the problem of evil, so here’s something to think about.<\/p>\n
Atheist B.C. Johnson in The Atheist Debater’s Handbook<\/span><\/a> argues that it is unlikely that God is all good, and hence unlikely that God exists (b\/c theists universally suppose God to be all-good). Johnson begins his case with an illustration. Imagine that due to an electrical short, a building catches on fire. Trapped in the building is an infant, who will surely be burned to death unless someone intervenes. Imagine further that there is a human pedestrian who knows <\/span>of the baby’s plight and can easily <\/span>intervene without any serious harm to herself and, nevertheless, leaves the baby to die. Surely, says Johnson, we would think such a person is morally blameworthy for failing to intervene. But how are things any different with God? God could easily intervene, yet such tragedies occur on a regular basis without any apparent divine intervention. So, says Johnson, just as we would judge the uncaring human to be a bad person, so also we should say the same of God. Any God who refrains from intervening to prevent egregious evils without excellent justification would not be a morally good God.<\/p>\n To buttress his argument, Johnson considers a variety of “excuses” that might be offered to get God “off the hook”. For example, one response might be that the baby will go to heaven, but Johnson argues that this is irrelevant to the baby’s suffering apart from some argument that suffering is necessary to go to heaven. Another response might be that God does not prevent such suffering because it is necessary either for a greater good or to avoid a greater evil. But, says Johnson, this implies that whatever <\/span>happens is overall best since God allowed it, and that<\/span>, he thinks, is absurd. Obviously the world could have been better than it is. Yet another response might be that God granted humans free will and so if a human causes a child to suffer (perhaps in this case the building superintendent was negligent in keeping up with repairs, which led to the fire) it is the human’s fault alone. But, says Johnson, one can be at fault for not having intervened in events that are caused by another person, just as the pedestrian should intervene to save the baby despite the fact that she had nothing to do with causing the fire.<\/p>\n After considering several additional replies and finding all of them wanting, Johnson concludes that God has no good excuse for allowing babies to burn to death. He concludes that there is no morally relevant difference between God and the human pedestrian who could have intervened and didn’t. Both are morally blameworthy.<\/p>\n How should we evaluate Johnson’s argument? It all seems to hang on this question: To what extent is God’s position <\/span>morally analogous<\/span> to the position of the human pedestrian?<\/span> Johnson thinks the analogy is a very close one, but is it? To evaluate Johnson’s argument we have to consider ways in which God’s position vis-a-vis the baby in the building is different <\/span>from the pedestrian’s and ask ourselves whether any of those differences make a difference<\/span> to the moral situation. I have some thoughts to share on this, but first I want hear what some of you think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week we’re looking at the problem of evil, so here’s something to think about. Atheist B.C. Johnson in The Atheist Debater’s Handbook argues that it is unlikely that God is all good, and hence unlikely that God exists (b\/c theists universally suppose God to be all-good). Johnson begins his case with an illustration. Imagine\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}