[Vision2020] Debate Topics for Metzler

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

As Michael Metzler appears to be tiring of the debate about the virtues of 
the Antebellum South, I would like to redirect his attention, bypassing 
altogether the issue of induction, to the problem of evil. (Wayne has more 
than proved his point that he is a better logician than analytic 
philosopher Metzler.) As a point of departure on my side, I would have 
Michael read my column below on Katrina and evil, or for more substantial 
argument I refer him to the last section of my article "Three Types of 
Divine Power" at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/3dp.htm.

I cannot claim to be an analytic philosophers as Michael does.  (Good 
grief, I did my dissertation on Martin Heidegger!) So I cannot follow 
everything that thinkers such as Alvin Plantinga writes.  But I do know one 
thing: when he proposes Satan as the solution to what I call "metaphysical" 
evil, he has lost all philosophical credibility.  So, Michael, let's keep 
it simple so that all the Visionaries can follow if they so choose.

And remember that for me the problem evil includes the evil that Yahweh 
most obviously commits in the Hebrew Bible, including such acts as the 
genocide of the Canaanites and the destruction of Job's family and 
herds.  In the end it is the "Lord [who] . . . brought [evil] upon him" 
(Job 42:11).  For more grisly details see my paper "Ungodly Abuse: Job, His 
Wife, and Their God" at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/job.htm.

As an alternative I repeat my challenge to him to join the debate on the 
Trinity I had with Doug Jones at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/trinity.htm.

If Michael is serious about abortion trumping the evils of slavery, he will 
have to demonstrate where in the Bible, or alternatively where in 
philosophy or science, it can be argued that the fetus is a person.  There 
is no question that Africans are persons, but our philosophical, 
theological, and legal tradition has generally placed personhood at the end 
of fetal development. On cannot murder a being that is not a person. For my 
arguments, you can read www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm.

There you go, Michael.  Feel free to choose your topic.

Nick Gier

THE GOOD LORD JUST DONE GAVE US A WHUPPIN'!
KATRINA AS THE WRATH OF GOD?

           Protestors outside the national headquarters of the Gay, 
Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Alliance held signs such as "Thank God 
for Katrina" and "New Orleans: City of Sinners and Sodomites." A 
Mississippian interviewed on NPR just after Katrina hit exclaimed that "The 
Good Lord just done gave us a whuppin'," but the Governor of Texas declared 
that "By the grace of God we were saved."  What, for God's sake, is going 
on here?

           Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do the wicked get 
away with murder and the innocent die in disasters such as Katrina and 
September 11? Following Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the protestors 
above claim to have a pat answer: all of us are being punished for the sins 
of a few.  Most of us, however, are repulsed by such an outrageous and 
poisonous diagnosis.

           My first philosophy of religion textbook contained a footnote 
that showed a long term study of tornado damage in the Bible Belt.  Far 
more churches were hit than bars and houses of prostitution.  If these are 
"acts of God," what on earth is God trying to tell us?

           The problem of evil has bedeviled philosophers and theologians 
for at least three millennia.  It is most cited reason by those who do not 
believe in God.  But even most believers are not willing to admit that God 
judges us with such horrendous violence.  This makes God a moral monster.

           In Agatha Christie's "Then There Were None," one of the 
characters opines that those who had been murdered were "struck down of the 
wrath of God."  Justice Wargrave was not convinced: "Providence leaves the 
work of conviction and chastisement to us mortals."  Ironically, it was 
Wargrave who planned all the murders!

           Let us see if we can actually reconcile belief in God with the 
existence of unmitigated evils.        The first thing to note is that 
Justice Wargrave is a good Confucian or Stoic in holding a doctrine of 
General Providence.  In this view God presides over a world that operates 
by natural laws and in which humans govern their own affairs.  Most people 
don't realize that this is the view that Darwin held in the first edition 
of "The Origin of Species."

           On the other hand, the Abrahamic religions--Judaism, 
Christianity, and Islam-- believe in Special Providence.  This means that 
God chooses particular prophets or saviors that embody divine authority, 
and then God intervenes in history as an expression of divine will and 
judgment.

           Philosophers make a distinction between moral evils and natural 
evils.  The first is the result of humans choosing to do good or evil.  For 
orthodox Christians the prototypical moral evil was Adam and Eve's choice 
to disobey God in the Garden of Eden.  All the other evil in the world 
started with this fatal decision.

	Natural or physical evil is defined as that which is not the result of any 
human will: disease (both physical and mental) and natural disasters.  In a 
theology in which God is all powerful, it can only be God who wills these 
conditions and events to happen. Even though some Christian legislators in 
Oklahoma tried to change the language of their insurance law, calling 
natural disasters "acts of God" is correct Christian theology.  The 
Oklahoma law makers, however, recognized the logical implication of such a 
view: it made God responsible for what all of us would call evil acts. I 
suspect that the Oklahoma legislators really wanted to say that Satan 
causes all the evil in the world.  But this is the heresy of Manicheanism, 
a view that compromises God's power by holding that there is another cosmic 
power that is the source of evil.

        Following the Book of Job, where it is clear that Satan operates 
only with the permission and delegated power of God, Christian theologians 
have consistently declared that even Satan is empowered by God. Martin 
Luther expressed the point most clearly: "Since God moves and does all, we 
must take it that he moves and acts even in Satan and the godless; . . . 
evil things are done with God himself setting them in motion." Following 
some key Old Testament passages, Luther believed that Satan was the dark 
side of God, the wrath of God.

        How do Christian theologians justify God doing evil?  Here is the 
rationale: God cannot abide the moral evils committed by humans, so God 
must show that justice must prevail.  Causing natural disasters are simply 
dramatic previews of the Last Judgment, when divine justice will finally be 
done.  If God is performing justice, then God is doing good not evil.  We 
would call a judge who let all criminals off the hook a bad judge, wouldn't we?

        Let's take a closer look at this solution to the problem of 
evil.  There is something important that has been forgotten.  When the 
theologian Augustine discussed the Fall of Adam and Eve, he made a very 
interesting concession: "our first parents fell into disobedience because 
they were already secretly corrupted." Adam and Eve were already corrupted 
because they had "deficient wills."  But who was responsible for their 
deficient wills?  They could be only if they had created themselves.  The 
only answer is that God created them finite, fragile, and corruptible.

        An engineer friend of mine was once hired by an auto insurance 
company to analyze the steel in a broken drive shaft.  He discovered that 
it was some of the cheapest steel that Chrysler could have bought for this 
crucial part of the chassis.  Now it would have been absurd for Chrysler's 
attorneys to state that the company was responsible for the positive 
elements of the steel but not its deficiencies.
At the same time it would be unfair to demand that the steel manufacturer 
make sure that there were no deficiencies at all.  This we could demand 
solely of an omnipotent Creator.  As the exclusive manufacturer of all 
natural things, the orthodox God is fully responsible for the deficiencies 
in his products.

        I submit that General Providence is a much more coherent view if 
people are going to continue their belief in God.  (Or Christians could 
revise the concept of divine power as explained at 
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/3dp.htm.) The Confucians and Stoics also 
believed that God is not a Creator.  Rather, God is coeternal with a 
universe that operates according to natural laws and contains rational 
beings that freely choose their own destinies.

	Following Justice Wargrave, we are solely responsible for our own 
"convictions and chastisements." Instead of blaming God, we can focus on a 
president who refuses to admit to global warming, who appoints unqualified 
people to important offices, and who gives tax cuts to people who don't 
need them.  Blame must also be laid at the feet of a Congress that has for 
years refused to fund necessary infrastructure repairs and 
maintenance.  Finally, Louisiana and New Orleans government officials are 
responsible for not being prepared for the big storm they knew was 
coming.  And God had nothing to do with it.