Omnipotence and Benevolence, or Why Theodicy is the Best Case for Atheism
Heard an interview this morning with Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Asked why he wrote that book, he explained that he had just completed training for a religious occupation (I don't consider the particular faith relevant here) when his son was diagnosed with progeria. This causes accelerated aging, and the patient typically dies a painful death of old age around age 13.
Kushner says that this caused him to re-evaluate his faith's teaching that God always has a reason for the bad things that happen. This is the first point I take issue with--why was the profound suffering of so many other innocents, including the Holocaust, so easy for him to subsume under such a doctrine? And yet when it impacts him directly, something must be amiss.
He saw two options: "Give up on God", or change his beliefs about God. He claims to have done the latter, but I think his new beliefs amount to having done both. He said that some things happen that God does not want to happen, that God's power is "self-limited" to preserve human freedom, some things happen because of the laws of nature, etc.
This is my next objection--a totally hands-off God is little more than atheism plus an afterlife. Who could pray for a loved one's recovery from illness, knowing it won't have any effect? It also doesn't make sense to me to let God off the hook for the functioning of the laws of nature; didn't he create those? Shouldn't he be responsible for how they operate? Aren't we obliged to assume that he chose the best laws of nature, that he means for their consequences to occur?
More importantly, this God becomes totally amoral. Let us consider the case of Kitty Genovese as recorded in the collective memory of popular culture. Wikipedia says that the facts of the case were quite different, but the usual understanding is summed up by the first newspaper headline about it, "Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police". Suppose that was how it really went down; anyone who hears that story inevitably recoils in horror. How could you knowingly fail to do the slightest thing to help a fellow creature under assault?
Now suppose that a witness had come forward and announced, "Yes, I saw the whole thing and did nothing. I could have called the police; I could have shot the attacker from my window; I could have gone out and driven the victim to the hospital in time to save her life. But I did none of this, and yet I am morally above reproach. Why? Because I was motivated by my desire not to interfere with human freedom, in this case, the freedom of the murderer." Would anyone agree that this absolves him? Is the attacker's freedom really a higher value than someone's life? And yet this is the precise argument used by most Christian theodicies.
But, you say, God is different. He's not just some guy in an apartment in Queens; he's the Creator and Lord of the Universe! OK, fine. Suppose that the above witness wasn't just some guy, but instead was a cop, or the mayor, or the governor, or the president. Does going up the scale of power and authority make his actions less abhorrent? Then why should going all the way to the top of that scale be any different?
So, is there a Creator somewhere out there, who sits back watching us and doing nothing to help with his supposed omnipotence? I don't know, but if there is, I see no reason to worship him.
Kushner says that this caused him to re-evaluate his faith's teaching that God always has a reason for the bad things that happen. This is the first point I take issue with--why was the profound suffering of so many other innocents, including the Holocaust, so easy for him to subsume under such a doctrine? And yet when it impacts him directly, something must be amiss.
He saw two options: "Give up on God", or change his beliefs about God. He claims to have done the latter, but I think his new beliefs amount to having done both. He said that some things happen that God does not want to happen, that God's power is "self-limited" to preserve human freedom, some things happen because of the laws of nature, etc.
This is my next objection--a totally hands-off God is little more than atheism plus an afterlife. Who could pray for a loved one's recovery from illness, knowing it won't have any effect? It also doesn't make sense to me to let God off the hook for the functioning of the laws of nature; didn't he create those? Shouldn't he be responsible for how they operate? Aren't we obliged to assume that he chose the best laws of nature, that he means for their consequences to occur?
More importantly, this God becomes totally amoral. Let us consider the case of Kitty Genovese as recorded in the collective memory of popular culture. Wikipedia says that the facts of the case were quite different, but the usual understanding is summed up by the first newspaper headline about it, "Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police". Suppose that was how it really went down; anyone who hears that story inevitably recoils in horror. How could you knowingly fail to do the slightest thing to help a fellow creature under assault?
Now suppose that a witness had come forward and announced, "Yes, I saw the whole thing and did nothing. I could have called the police; I could have shot the attacker from my window; I could have gone out and driven the victim to the hospital in time to save her life. But I did none of this, and yet I am morally above reproach. Why? Because I was motivated by my desire not to interfere with human freedom, in this case, the freedom of the murderer." Would anyone agree that this absolves him? Is the attacker's freedom really a higher value than someone's life? And yet this is the precise argument used by most Christian theodicies.
But, you say, God is different. He's not just some guy in an apartment in Queens; he's the Creator and Lord of the Universe! OK, fine. Suppose that the above witness wasn't just some guy, but instead was a cop, or the mayor, or the governor, or the president. Does going up the scale of power and authority make his actions less abhorrent? Then why should going all the way to the top of that scale be any different?
So, is there a Creator somewhere out there, who sits back watching us and doing nothing to help with his supposed omnipotence? I don't know, but if there is, I see no reason to worship him.