This is a continuation of the exchange documented in my post, Problem of Evil & of Good: Great Dialogue w Agnostic (6-17-21). The words of “axelbeingcivil” (from my combox) will be in blue.

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Alright, here we go! This is gonna take some time and effort…

I don’t want to turn this into a mega-quote-fest, so I’m going to try and break this down into several broad categories of response. There’s multiple threads to this discussion now and they all deserve a response, but they all have their own unique aspects.

Broadly, I’d frame these things as…

1. Permissive vs. Perfect Will
2. The actions of Satan specifically
3. Libertarian free will (I am probably going to cover this discussing point 1)
4. Good in a godless world

Permissive vs. Perfect Will

So, before I go any further, I need to just clarify terms here as to what is being talked about. If I understand the concepts correctly, Perfect Will represents what God “wants” to happen. That is, if all the universe worked flawlessly and without failure, God’s perfect will is precisely what would happen but, according to the argument, because of free will, things don’t go according to the grand plan.

That’s right. God can’t control free will to mold it into His perfect will, or else it would cease to be free will. But He can work around and with it and bring about the best outcome, given free will: at least for His followers. Romans 8:28 (my favorite verse in the Bible) states: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (RSV). God also has to work around our Cosmic Rebellion, which Christians call “the fall” or “original sin”; and our continuing predisposition towards sin (concupiscence). He does so, but that is His permissive, rather than perfect will.

Permissive Will, therefore, is the result. That is, God allows us to act upon our free will, regardless of the consequences to ourselves or others, because free will creates some kind of moral value. That is, God could’ve made us robots who automatically and always love and obey, but didn’t because it’d nullify the value of any good that we do.

Correct. Would you prefer to be a robot rather than a free agent who is truly free?

Now, of course, there are times where God does intervene. Miracles, prophets, etc.

As a rare exception to the usual norm and as an act of mercy . . .

These, of course, shun the Permissive Will, as God imposes the divine will directly,

It’s hardly “imposition” if we like the results. The recipient of a miracle would say, “God can ‘impose’ that type of will on me whenever He likes, if I am healed of blindness or have a demon cast out of me, or am cured of cancer!”

but I don’t think your argument requires God to be in any way consistent with when they do or do not apply Permissive Will.

We are too limited in our perspective to even fully understand what “consistency” means in an omniscient, all-benevolent Being. Let me submit an analogy if I may. We were changing our oldest granddaughter’s diaper yesterday (we’re babysitting her for a week) and she was putting up a tremendous fuss. No doubt she thought this was “torture” and a huge inconvenience (perhaps even embarrassment: who knows?). But from our far more advanced vantage-point we know it was absolutely necessary and that to not do it would bring about a diaper rash, making her far more miserable than she was during the “ordeal” of a diaper change.

Just like the baby, there are many things we can’t possibly comprehend about God, by the nature of the case. He’s infinitely greater in every way than we are. This is why He provided us with inspired revelation: to learn as much as humanly possible about Him.

You’ll forgive me for considering that arbitrary, though.

It’s not, in light of what I just wrote.

But, all that said, I do not consider the conception of a “Permissive Will” to be a moral defense here.

Humans engage in permissiveness too. Earlier, you used the example of you letting your daughter go out and party. There’s a possibility that doing so may lead to questionable behaviour but, in the long run, you allow it because the experience of making her own decisions is worth the risks entailed there.

On the other hand, if your daughter showed you a handgun and told you she was off to murder the neighbour… You might be inclined to try and stop her! You’d recognize that the benefits of her freedom are significantly outweighed by the long-term harm she is almost certainly about to do.

God simply can’t intervene (as our infinitely greater Creator) every time an evil act is going to occur. It’s not the same as a parent and a daughter. Every analogy of human beings to God has its limitations. This is what I mentioned last time. God is on a different plane than we are. I speculated about a world in which God intervened to prevent every particular act of evil in my longest and most in-depth treatment of this issue:. I was talking more about natural disasters and calamities, but the same reasoning could easily be applied to human-produced acts of evil:

It is said that God could and should have performed many more miracles than Christians say He performs, to alleviate “unnecessary” suffering. But this is precisely what a natural world with laws and a uniformitarian principle precludes from the outset. How is it that the atheist can (in their hypothetical theories and arguments against Christianity) imagine all sorts of miracles and supernatural events that God should have done when it comes to evil and the FWD [free will defense]? “God should do this,” “He should have done that,” “I could have done much better than God did,” . . .

Yet when it comes to natural science (which is precisely what we are talking about, in terms of ”natural evil”), all of a sudden none of this is plausible (barely even possible) at all. Why is that? Legions of materialistic, naturalistic, and/or atheist scientists and their intellectual followers won’t allow the slightest miracle or direct divine intervention (not even in terms of intelligent design within the evolutionary hypothesis) with regard to the origin of life or DNA or mammals, or the human brain or eye, or even unique psychological/mental traits which humans possess.

Why would this be? I submit that it is because they have an extreme reluctance to introduce the miraculous when the natural can conceivably explain anything. They will resist any supernatural intervention into biological processes till their dying breath.

Yet when we switch the conversation over to FWD all of a sudden atheists — almost in spite of themselves – are introducing “superior” supernatural options for God to exercise, right and left. God is supposed to eliminate all disease, even though they are inevitable (even “normative”) according to the laws of biology as we know them. God is supposed to transform the entire structure of the laws of physics, so no one will ever get a scratch on their face. He is supposed to suspend a bullet in mid-air so it won’t kill its intended target, or make a knife turn to liquid before it rips into the flesh of yet another murder victim.

In the world these atheist critics demand of God, if He is to be a “good” God, or to exist at all, according to their exalted criteria, no one should ever have to get a corn on their toe, or a pimple, or have to blow their nose, or have chapped lips. God should turn rocks into Jello every time a child is to fall on one. Cars should turn into silly putty or steam or cellophane when they are about to crash. The sexually promiscuous should have their sexual diseases immediately healed so that no one else will catch them, and so that they can go on their merry way, etc.

Clearly, these sorts of critics find “plausible” whatever opposes against theism and Christianity, no matter what the subject is; no matter how contradictory and far-fetched such arguments are, compared to their attacks against other portions of the Christian apologetic or theistic philosophical defenses. Otherwise, they would argue consistently and accept the natural world as it is, rather than adopting a desperate, glaring logical double standard.

In effect, then, if we follow their reasoning, the entire universe becomes an Alice in Wonderland fantasy-land where man is at the center. This is the Anthropic Principle! Atheists then in effect demand from God the very things they claim to loathe when they are arguing against theism on other grounds. Man must be at the center of the universe and suffer no harm, in order for theism to be true. Miracles must take place here, there, and everywhere, if theism is to be accepted as a plausible or superior alternative to atheism.

The same atheists will argue till they’re blue in the face against demonstrable miracles such as Jesus’ Resurrection. What they demand in order to accept Christianity they are never willing to accept when in fact it occurs to any degree (say, e.g., the healings performed by Jesus). God is not bound by human whims and fancies and demands. The proofs and evidences He has already provided are summarily rejected by atheists, one-by-one, as never “good enough.”

Atheists and other skeptics seem to want to go to any lengths of intellectual inconsistency and hostility in order to preserve their skepticism. They refuse to bow down to God unless He creates an entirely different world, in order to conform to their ultimately illogical imaginings and excessive, absurd requests for what He should have done. They’re consistent in their inconsistency.

By definition, the natural world entails suffering. One doesn’t eliminate that “difficulty” simply by resorting to a hypothetical fantasy-world where God eliminates every suffering by recourse to miracle and suspension of the natural laws He put into place.

In any event, the world as He created it did not originally involve suffering (nor will it in the future, for the redeemed). Man could have chosen to live in such a world, just as the unfallen angels did. They chose never to rebel. But man did, and having done so, now he wants to blame God for everything for which the blame in actuality lies squarely upon his own shoulders.

The natural world can’t modify itself every time someone stubs their toe or gets a sunburn. That would require infinitely more miracles than any Christian claims have occurred. With a natural world and natural laws, any number of diseases are bound to occur. One could stay out in the cold too long and get pneumonia. Oh, so atheists want God – if He exists – to immediately cure every disease that comes about? Again, the miraculous, by definition, is not the normative. It is the extraordinary, rare event. I might stay underwater too long, swallow water, and damage my lungs. I could fall while ice skating, bump my head severely and damage my brain. I might eat a poisonous mushroom, or get stung by a poisonous snake, etc., etc. That’s how the world works. It is not God’s fault’ it is the nature of things, and the things of nature.

In an orderly, uniformitarian, largely predictable natural world which makes any sense at all, there will be diseases, torn ligaments, colds, and so forth. The question then becomes: “how much is too much suffering?” or “how many miracles is God required to perform to be a good and just God?” At that point the atheist can, of course, give no substantive, non-arbitrary answer, and his outlook is reduced to wishful thinking and pipe dreams.

Materialistic evolutionists resist miraculous creation at all costs precisely because they think miracles are exceedingly rare. Christians apply the same outlook to reality-at-large. We say that miracles will be very infrequent, by their very nature (“SUPERnatural”). And that must be the case so that the world is orderly and predictable enough to comfortably live in, in the first place.

This is because we recognize that there’s a threshold of potential harm beyond which allowing someone to act is unacceptable. We, too, value the free agency of other human beings, but that value is not exceeded by a certain degree of harm to others.

If God intervened every time we wanted to commit evil, then it would soon be the total contravention of free will (unless He picked-and-chose when to intervene, which is arbitrary and unlikely). Since He values our free will, He can’t do that because it is directly contradictory and even God is subject to the laws of logic, which are the laws of reality and the real world.

But He does mold our will in due course, as we approach a never-ending future in either heaven or hell. In light of that, this is simply a necessary temporary state of affairs: like a child having to wear braces for five years out of a life of 70-80 years or more. My wife had to wear a back brace for a while in her teenage years (scoliosis). Had she not done so, she would be in a wheelchair today. We chose to rebel. It wasn’t God’s choice. He allowed it.

Likewise, we recognize that, when one has the power to intervene to halt such violations, but chooses not to, one is culpable to some extent for them. Not as much as the bad actor, generally, but the degree of culpability is usually proportional to the level of control they had over the situation and responsibility that they held. This ranges from a parent allowing a child irresponsible levels of freedom (eating nothing but candy and smoking cigarettes is not something a responsible parent lets a twelve-year-old do) to not reporting malfeasance to refusing to intervene in ongoing immoral behaviour. If a wealthy person allows a person to starve at their door, the Bible itself calls that person out as evil!

None of these analogical considerations overcome the factors of the Creator-creature relationship that I have been discussing, in light of free will. You need to address the arguments I have been making too.

To that end, we have to conclude that, since God has the power to intervene and chooses not to, they bear at least some of the responsibility for what happens.

What this argument amounts to, then, is the belief that allowing the unrestrained exercise of free will is more important than placing any kind of safeguard or abjuration against evil action.

I don’t think anyone, anywhere, ever has comfortably made that argument. There are always circumstances where, at a certain point, it becomes immoral not to intervene. There’s always murkiness and grey areas because humans are still human, but I would argue that most human beings recognize, for example, that the British were right to put a stop to the immolation of widows in India, even if their conquest and occupation was a selfish evil.

I do not see any benefit to history’s great atrocities, especially not to the victims of those atrocities, that would justify a lack of intervention. Moreover, there is a double crime, too, in that many of those atrocities occurred due to lack of knowledge on the parts of various human beings.

In summary, I don’t find that perspective at all persuasive.

God does overcome “grand evil” in many ways, through prayer, selected miracles, the particularities of circumstances and situations, etc. So the Christian would say, for example, that men (not God) caused World War II. God didn’t decide to start killing everyone different (the Nazis and the Japanese). But God could have (and we believe, did) help in any number of ways to defeat that evil, in assisting human beings to overcome it. Thus, we have a world where the Nazis didn’t prevail and predominate.  Other evils still have to be opposed (terrorism, remaining Communism, sexism, racism, economic exploitation, slavery [which still exists], sexual trafficking, drug pushers, militant fundamentalist Islam, sexual immorality, etc.). God will help relatively good people to defeat those things, too, should they decide to do so.

There are all kinds of stories about World War II, where prayer had a marvelous effect, or where weather changes favored the Allies. I just saw a movie about D-Day (The Longest Day). It is a fact that Hitler took a sleeping pill and slept longer than usual on the morning of D-Day. Consequently, German generals couldn’t do things they thought were necessary to prevent the success of the invasion. Who’s to say that God didn’t put the thought into the mind of Hitler: “take a sleeping pill”? Hitler’s little nap could have changed the entire course of the war.

The best German general, Rommel, was in Germany celebrating the birthday of his wife on D-Day and so was a non-factor. God does intervene in rare exceptions with miracles. Likewise, He can choose to intervene in a more subtle, hidden way. Hitler made lots of dumb military decisions, like deciding to fight on eastern and western fronts simultaneously (which sealed his fate in retrospect).

So God does intervene through massive prayer (human beings freely expressing their desire for good to prevail over evil). He’s a caring, loving God. But He cannot on the other hand (due to free will and the laws of nature), always intervene against evil (for the reasons I have explained); nor is He obliged to do so. He made us free and able, for the most part, to decide to cease doing the evil that we so often choose to do, and to oppose the evil that others are intent on doing.

Your task, on the other hand, as always, is to tell us all why you casually assume that various things are wrong and evil in the first place. You have no objective basis for doing so, without God. And so, today, we have otherwise ethical people saying it is fine and dandy to allow a baby who survived an abortion attempt to starve to death on a table in a hospital, gasping for air and in agony the whole time. I say that is evil and barbaric; so does Christianity and the Bible and God. Millions now say it is perfectly acceptable behavior, along with the ongoing genocide of abortion itself: which is our equivalent to the extraordinary moral blindness of slavery in the 19th century.

Even the likely minority of atheists who agree these things are wrong have no real, objective basis to say why they think so. Their morality comes from men. Thus, seven men on the Supreme Court in America in 1973 thought it was morally permissible to kill children in the womb. That’s the atheist “standard”: those seven men. There are many other examples besides abortion. Evil people think the drug trade or sexual trafficking is perfectly fine, etc.

Satan, in specific

Satan’s a distinct and separate case here. I don’t think you reinforce your argument particularly well by referencing Job, in which God very specifically places Job – poor Job – into Satan’s hands.

That’s part and parcel of free will. In rebelling against God, human beings put themselves under the particular alternate influence of Satan, who had also rebelled as an angel. God allows this to take place. But there will be an end to it. And we know that because God, Who knows everything and is outside of time, told us so.

He does not let Satan kill him,

That’s the point. See, there was a limit, wasn’t there?

but allows Satan to torment Job in ways that are truly unimaginable for those who have not endured them; not merely the anxieties and fears of starvation and disease, but the loss of his wives and children, who are the essence of what makes life matter.

And in the end He restored Job’s fortunes. We’ve already been through this.

(As an aside, it’s entirely possible that Job was a slaveholder, so perhaps there’s a reason to not have too much pity on him, but I think anyone can appreciate that the loss of one’s family as a trauma regardless of the person in question.)

He suffered terribly. There is no doubt about that.

If the argument is that Satan acts freely, without God’s permission, Job is a bad example. Satan was explicitly given control by God. 

He’s permitted to do so. Permissive will. It doesn’t portray God as saying, “I think it’s wonderful that you want to horribly torment Job! You have My blessing!” The story is an attempt to explain an abstract concept (the problem of evil) insofar as it ultimately says that it is a mystery and that God, as God, cannot be fully understood by the mind of man (that’s what most of the dialogue in the book is about). It uses the literary technique of anthropopathism to do so. Satan gained control because human beings chose Him over God when it was time to make a choice between the two. And we choose his “way” every time we choose to sin. If we hadn’t done that, it would be a non-issue. But when we made that choice, God allowed it to occur. And that’s why he allowed Satan to torment Job.

It was not Job’s personal choice or failures that led to his torment – quite the opposite, we are told that Job is a good and godly man, who praises and gives thanks for his blessings – but simply God listening to Satan’s argument and seeking to prove the Accuser wrong.

Exactly: even the righteous suffer because of man’s cosmic rebellion and what it has brought about. This is what Christians agonize about, and what apologists have to try to explain. Atheists have to agonize over how to define good in a non-arbitrary, non-relativistic, objective way. And atheism has produced far worse fruits in the real world.

HaShem’s response at the end of Job is, in all of this, a bit amusing, since it’s an appeal to mystery. God has some grander plan than mortal minds can consider, so asking the question of “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is inane, at best. The Lord works in mysterious ways, so Job tells us.

He’s exactly right. We can understand a lot, with the help of revelation, but we can never fully understand a Being so far above us as God is.

1st Kings 22, likewise, makes reference to a deceiving spirit approaching God, who has asked the celestial choir who shall act to lure Ahab into destruction. Angel or demon, it’s clear that this spiritual principality acts only with the direct assent and direction of God.

Most people think this is an instance of the personification of the spirit of prophecy. It’s definitely not an evil spirit, though. Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament states concerning this:

The vision described by Micah was not merely a subjective drapery introduced by the prophet, but a simple communication of the real inward vision by which the fact had been revealed to him, that the prophecy of those 400 prophets was inspired by a lying spirit. The spirit (הרוּח) which inspired these prophets as a lying spirit is neither Satan, nor any evil spirit whatever, but, as the definite article and the whole of the context show, the personified spirit of prophecy, which is only so far a πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον τῆς πλάνης (Zechariah 13:2; 1 John 4:6) and under the influence of Satan as it works as שׁקר רוּח in accordance with the will of God. For even the predictions of the false prophets, as we may see from the passage before us, and also from Zechariah 13:2 and the scriptural teaching in other passages concerning the spiritual principle of evil, were not mere inventions of human reason and fancy; but the false prophets as well as the true were governed by a supernatural spiritual principle, and, according to divine appointment, were under the influence of the evil spirit in the service of falsehood, just as the true prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit in the service of the Lord. The manner in which the supernatural influence of the lying spirit upon the false prophets is brought out in Micah’s vision is, that the spirit of prophecy (רוח הנבואה) offers itself to deceive Ahab as שׁקר רוּח in the false prophets. Jehovah sends this spirit, inasmuch as the deception of Ahab has been inflicted upon him as a judgment of God for his unbelief. But there is no statement here to the effect that this lying spirit proceeded from Satan, because the object of the prophet was simply to bring out the working of God in the deception practised upon Ahab by his prophets. . . .

Jehovah has ordained that Ahab, being led astray by a prediction of his prophets inspired by the spirit of lies, shall enter upon the war, that he may find therein the punishment of his ungodliness. As he would not listen to the word of the Lord in the mouth of His true servants, God had given him up (παρέδωκεν, Romans 1:24, Romans 1:26, Romans 1:28) in his unbelief to the working of the spirits of lying. But that this did not destroy the freedom of the human will is evident from the expression תּפתּה, “thou canst persuade him,” and still more clearly from תּוּכל גּם, “thou wilt also be able,” since they both presuppose the possibility of resistance to temptation on the part of man.

This supports what I was just saying about how God could have put thoughts into the mind of Hitler or Rommel, etc., to influence the outcome of World War II. God likes to work in concert with us and our prayers (free will again). Lots of Christians were praying for an Allied victory in World War II, just as lots of Christians prayed and engaged in activism and voting that ended British and American slavery. God didn’t simply send brimstone and fire from heaven, because that’s not usually how He works.

Not that the Allies were perfect, either, in World War II. When we sought to end the Pacific War, it was by intrinsically evil acts: two nuclear bombs on civilian populations.

And while there are references later on to the power to cast out unclean spirits – the pneuma akathartoi – these are curious beasts. There is no infernal hierarchy, no mention of infernal powers. The Talmud actually describes shedim as a different class of being entirely; mortal, despite their generally non-corporeal forms, and in need of sustenance.

No particular comment on that . . .

You can take, from all of this, a very different interpretation, where Satan is not some fallen angel but, rather, exactly what the name HaSatan implies; the Accuser, a loyal servant whose duty it is to test humanity on behalf of God, with the unclean spirits commanded and exorcised merely a choir of the otherwise mundane and earthly ephemeral entities, who obey divine commandments but are antithetical to human life.

I don’t see that the Bible (especially the New Testament) teaches that.

But let’s set that interesting demonology aside for a moment and focus on a core question: If God has demonstrated a power to prevent demonic incursion into our world, but also a willingness to allow it anyway, the natural answer is that God is allowing it for some purpose. As Job demonstrates, we may be unclear or ignorant of such purposes, but God still chooses to allow it. To that end, God was responsible for all the suffering Job experienced.

Allowing is not total responsibility. That’s the equation that you have not established is the case. And just because God is omniscient and omnipotent doesn’t change that fact.

That’s really the core of it. If you take the Book of Job as a literal telling of events, Job’s suffering only happened because of God. Ergo, God is directly responsible.

The Satan portion is likely anthropopathic (i.e., not literal; a literary technique). But the theology fits fine with Christianity (and Judaism). But it didn’t “only happen because of God.” God allowed it to happen, just like he has allowed the devil to run free till the time of judgment comes.

If you then believe that Satan only has any such power because of God, you must likewise hold God responsible for all actions by infernal whim.

That doesn’t follow at all. I don’t how many times and how many different ways I have to say it. Just because God could change just about any particular in the universe (that isn’t contradictory or evil) doesn’t mean that He is responsible for every particular decision made by all creatures. Freedom is what it is and so is free will.

Libertarian free will

You’ll have to forgive me but I don’t find “it’s a mystery!” to be satisfying. If you can’t produce a reason to hold a specific set of beliefs, I can’t dissuade you, but you’re also going to have a hard time convincing me.

Well, quite obviously I ain’t just doing that, because if I was, this paper would be much shorter than it is! I am explaining as far as the human intellect can take this. Every Christian admits there is mystery, too, to things that are of God. That’s not unusual at all for any thinker (lest you think so). It’s not “blind faith.” So, for example, in science, there continue to be great mysteries. The big thing right now is dark matter and dark energy. Scientists believe in both, but know very little about them. They manage to believe without total, complete, comprehensive knowledge. They know enough to believe in them. And that’s how Christianity is.

I do not believe predestination is required to obliterate free will; I think the very concept of free will is paradoxical in and of itself. I laid out my reasoning in more complex terms last time but it can simply be focused on the question of “Why did someone make a decision?”

All decisions are the result of causal chains. There is a cause and an effect. If someone could theoretically have produced a different outcome from the same causes, the effect is random, because there is no relation between the causes and the effects.

Omniscience doesn’t enter into the question here; libertarian free will is a paradox from its inception. Omniscience just adjusts the level of moral responsibility that lies on God’s hands since, knowing the outcome from the start, they could change it to be different. Applying blame for actors that God essentially placed into that situation is blaming the victim.

Furthermore, even if something like libertarian free will did exist, you’ve demonstrated that the “outcome” of it – of sin – is unnecessary. You say that, unhampered by flesh, strife, Original Sin, or infernal influences, humanity would be sinless and pure, even with free will. Knowing that, absent those things, humanity would be perfectly good, God created them anyway, instead of simply creating humanity already in those perfect conditions. Or, likewise, God could have created humanity sufficiently capable of resisting all temptation and with the moral drive to do so, whereupon we would never sin, despite these issues.

He can’t do that and allow free will (i.e., a free will that would always make the right choice and avoid the whole evil detour). It’s possible, however, that there are worlds with unfallen creatures. C. S. Lewis wrote about that. But if they exist, it’s by the creatures’ choices, not because God wouldn’t allow them to do otherwise. The outcome is driven by the creature, not God. God gives them everything they need to make the right choice.

It’s simply inescapable. If God knew suffering would occur because of certain factors and could’ve avoided them, God is responsible for that suffering. You can argue it serves some greater purpose – and perhaps it might – but then the question arises of whether God could’ve achieved the same ends with a different means. Omnipotence demands we say yes.

I will add that a less perfect deity could be forgiven for these failings. A god who is not all-knowing may simply not know the outcome of their actions and just be doing their best. A god who is not all-powerful might simply not be able to bring about a perfect outcome. But for any deity that is ascribed perfection, it’s not really possible to escape these issues.

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga (whom many think is the greatest living Christian philosopher) doesn’t think so. See my paper, “Logical” Problem of Evil: Alvin Plantinga’s Decisive Refutation (The Problem of Evil is NOT a Disproof of God’s Existence, Goodness, or Omnipotence).

Good in a godless world

I have to start by saying that I do not believe rewards or later goodness “makes up” for suffering. I believe that, in the balance, it can be worth it to suffer for a worthy goal, but the better thing is to attain the goal without suffering. If you made your offer of blood in exchange for a vacation, I’d say that the benefit outweighs the suffering, but it’d be even better to get the benefit without the pain.

I make the same moral consideration with, say, giving a child a vaccine. It’s unpleasant for them, but it’s better they suffer a small pain and be tired for a few days than risk catching measles. However, if I can vaccinate a child without causing them any pain, I would. Why wouldn’t I? The suffering doesn’t add anything to the equation.

In the end, suffering isn’t erased by later rewards; the suffering is real, no matter what. Just like I don’t believe that apologies or later good deeds can “make up” for past misdeeds. They can demonstrate you’ve changed, they can show true contrition, and even just be a sign of being a good person, but you can’t “buy” your way into being a good person. There is no tally sheet that we all get to work off. Done, as they say, is done.

We would say that human beings don’t have exhaustive knowledge about what the higher purpose for suffering may be. I was just watching the Ken Burns documentary on Lewis and Clark, and in the features they interviewed him and asked about his mother dying when he was twelve. And he noted that the greatest thing his mother ever did for him was die when he was young. It sounded shocking at first. But he didn’t mean that he wished her to die; rather, the point was that her death forced him to confront “real life” and his own goals and aspirations, and he thinks that it literally made him what he is: the world’s greatest documentary filmmaker. It doesn’t make suffering less painful, but good things can come from it.

If there’s something I still enjoy and appreciate about Christianity, it’s the idea of grace and redemption; it’s something I still hold onto as a belief. Not in the form of a divinely granted salvific power, but simply that people can grow and change, and that letting go and forgiving past transgressions is important to our health moving forwards. We can’t change the past, but we can move on and move forwards; sins washed away by our transformation into a better person.

No one can do any good thing without God’s grace, and it must be asked for and “worked with” (including repentance for sins). You can hardly ask for something from a being, if He doesn’t exist. But the principle makes sense, in a world with God. Without God, it makes little sense. It’ll work to an extent, because that’s how God designed it, but if there had never been a God, the world would be far, far worse than it is. And the atheist is always free to redefine any sin away. He or she is his own king and master. No one to be accountable to in the final analysis.

Now… On the meat of the topic of goodness in a godless world… Yes, I do believe people are basically good. There’s a wonderful parable by the Confucian scholar Mencius, called the Allegory of the Well, which I think illustrates it nicely.

If a human being – high or low, rich or poor, virtuous or venal – is walking down a road and sees a child playing by a well, and that child trips and falls, their innate reaction will be to reach for that child to save them. That most basic, unthinking, unfeeling instinct in all humans is to help and protect one another. Humans, like raindrops in a forest, will always flow towards the common river. Like water being forced uphill, people can be made to act against this instinct, but that core instinct – that care for one another – lies in the heart of everyone.

And we say it is because God already put that good and decent impulse in them. Where we agree is to say that if a person rejects this understanding of charity and compassion, it’s their own fault.

It’s a pleasant and simplistic allegory – as allegories are – and humanity is complex and complicated, with some people born with defects in empathy, say, but I think its essential truth is correct: Humans, at their basest level, want to do good for one another. It takes other circumstances to make that no longer the case.

They do before they are corrupted by sin. This is why children before the age of reason seem so “innocent.” They actually literally are more innocent than those who know more and thus sin more.

It’s why, in every part of the world where there has been an atrocity, those in charge have taken special pains to ensure that those doing the actual deed are as mentally distanced from the victims as possible. Even those people who committed history’s worst atrocities, even the Nazis, engaged in this behaviour, to hide from themselves what they were doing. Prior to the use of gas chambers, soldiers who were made to shoot Germany’s “undesirables” frequently took their own lives, because the horror of what they’d done stained itself indelibly into their souls.

Yes, because somewhere buried down deep, remains the conscience that comes from God.

So, as I said, I do have reasons for believing people are basically good. Evil exists within us too, but I think we are, overall, good. Weak, perhaps, but good. But I also said that this is an article of faith for me. I don’t really have absolute proof either way. You can ascribe that to the fumes of faith if you will, but it’s not something I can really reason perfectly for or against.

I believe people to be basically good, in absence of perfect evidence one way or the other. In this, I am not, as you say, hyper-rational.

If we’re “basically good” on the whole, then all the human-caused suffering we see is the remarkable thing to explain. The world shouldn’t and wouldn’t be what it is, and this is your “problem of good.” The good things would be far more prevalent than the bad, if this were true. You have a lot more to explain than I do, because I believe in original sin and actual sin and human beings with free will who rebel against the All-Good God Who made them.

But in the balance, assume I’m wrong. Assume that there are no gods, no Heaven or Hell, that things are as bleak as you say, and that humanity is fundamentally malicious at its core.

It wouldn’t affect one iota as to whether atheism is true or not. Truth doesn’t care about our feelings; it simply is. If God exists, it doesn’t matter whether I find their actions immoral or not; they do exist. Likewise, if God does not exist, it doesn’t matter how bleak or uncomfortable or despairing it makes you feel; they simply don’t. Our wants or desires are not the moral arbiter of a belief’s correctness or falsity.

But what is the moral arbiter? This is your difficulty. All you have done is tell me what isn’t the moral arbiter. And I don’t blame you, because in atheism there is nothing beyond human beings. If we determine right and wrong, then given world history and the long sad record of men doing evil to one another, to me that is an exponentially more difficult problem than the problem of evil in the theistic worldview. And it’s why — I submit — you have written very little about it. Atheists have no solid answer to it, from where I sit.

And as a conclusion on why I care… I don’t believe God exists, but you definitely do. I share this world with people of all religious faiths, and I find their ideas and perspectives fascinating. It’s interesting to engage with people and discuss their perspectives; to test their ideas and my own, and see what shakes out. Because even if I don’t believe in your deity, you do, and it clearly shapes and affects your beliefs on things like morality and responsibility, which are at the core of this discussion.

I deeply appreciate your cordiality and “normal” behavior. Christians are confronted constantly with atheists who seem to get a charge out of mocking and belittling us and telling whoppers about how anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and childishly gullible we are. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to simply have a good discussion, minus all the insults and straw men. Rest assured also that my criticisms I have are of your views, not you as a person. You seem like a really cool, likable person.

Sorry for taking so long… But hopefully this was worth the wait.

It certainly was. No need for apologies. Thanks!

***

Photo credit: Cover of the 1888 edition of Goody Two-Shoes, published by McLoughlin Bro’s. of New York, US. The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes was a children’s story published by John Newbery in London in 1765. [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Summary: More great dialogue with a friendly, non-insulting agnostic on the problem of evil: that thorniest of issues; along with my retort regarding the corresponding atheist “problem of good.”

This began when “axelbeingcivil” started the discussion on my blog, on 7-7-21. His words will be in blue.

*****

A belief in demons, even the devil, does not mean a belief in Hell or eternal separation from God. God sends malicious and malevolent spirits to serve his purposes at several points in the Bible, and they are described as faithful attendants of his court. When Satan appears in the Book of Job, he is given no reproach or chastisement. If people accept that God sends hardships to test them or for them to struggle against, why not devils to inflict misery and suffering? After all, omnipotence means God intends for the suffering to happen anyway, right?

That’s an extreme form of Calvinism, which is a tiny minority position in historic Christianity. Did you used to be a Christian? If so, what kind? Are you an atheist now?

I admit, I have many negative things to say about Calvin – his conception of what justice, compassion, and mercy look like is nothing but rebranded sadism – but I do think he was one of the rare few people to understand the implications of omniscience and omnipotence as to evil’s presence in the world.

That said, I don’t think this is Calvinism. The notion that Satan acts only and solely as God permits is a part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. See:

Although Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and his kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action may cause grave injuries – of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature – to each man and to society, the action is permitted by divine providence which with strength and gentleness guides human and cosmic history. It is a great mystery that providence should permit diabolical activity, but “we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him.”

Paragraph 395 of the Catechism. This notion – that Satan and all his evil are only and solely what God permits, for some ostensible purpose (usually to test people or to allow for God’s own glorification) – is fairly mainstream.

I was Christian, yes. Now, I would call myself an agnostic atheist. Still fond of chatting with my former coreligionists, though.

Yes, of course, God permits evil (His permissive will). It’s not His perfect will. Therefore, He causes no evil; He only permits it.

What kind of Christian were you; what denomination?

If something only occurs because you permit it, what’s the difference between you causing it and not? It feels like, if you were to analyze that through the principle of moral cooperation, it’d be obvious that it is indeed evil.

If I, say, knew that someone was preparing to commit a mass shooting and had evidence of that, and I could prevent it with no fear of harm to myself (or indeed anyone), but chose not to, in what way am I not morally culpable?

(And, yes, I am aware that opens the door to holding ourselves culpable for all kinds of evils-by-tacit-approval. I actually believe that is the case. Humans can’t be said to be at all perfect.)

As for what kind, hard to put a pin in it, but always some kind of Protestant. In my life, I’ve been a part of Anglican, Methodist, and Baptist church communities.

I permit my teenage daughter to go out and party with her friends. If she decides to start taking heroin or to drunk drive, is that therefore my fault? Or is it hers? Did I cause that?

The analogy here doesn’t really work, since you lack perfect knowledge and perfect power and perfect compassion. You also didn’t create heroin or the intoxicating effects of alcohol or any of the fundamental laws of the cosmos, much less a thing like injury and death. Hence, the level of responsibility you bear is very different than someone who did.

Assuming here that the doctrine of Hell is correct for the moment, and the native seat of Satan is a bronze throne at the heart of a lake of fire, lord of his prison-city, the only reason that the infernal powers may have any control or influence over Earth and its inhabitants is divine remit. That is, if God simply declared that those rebellious and emphatically former heavenly princes could not enter Earth’s spheres or have influence over it, they would indeed have no influence. The only reason they have any whatsoever is God’s direct say-so.

Since God also knows whether these infernal powers mean good or ill, what they both intend to do and will do (which may not be the same thing) if allowed to proceed, and that God is perfectly capable of halting them without the slightest issue if so desired… It stands to reason that they only and solely act at God’s discretion. That would make God responsible for their actions, even without having directed them.

Consider, by way of analogy, a parole board. These are people whose job it is to weigh individual convicts on their merits and likelihood of reform, and to approve the release of those who merit the opportunity of being redeemed to society and retaining those who still present a threat.

Imagine if a parole board, in its entirely limited and human capacity, had strong evidence of a convict up for release not merely being a potential threat but actively and openly planning to do harm to someone or likely even many someones. I’m talking about threatening writings, declarations of hatred, detailed plans, etc.

If that parole board decided, in full knowledge, to release that inmate anyway, we would rightly consider them culpable in whatever suffering inevitably followed. Just because their hands weren’t the ones that got dirty doesn’t change that they were in a position of power and authority and, rather than use it to protect the public, they did the opposite.

And that, in turn, is a degree of responsibility we purely demand from mere humans; flawed, frail, feeble things, herein infused with only a modest amount of power. To how much higher standard must be held one in whom all power and all authority is invested?

It doesn’t matter how powerful or knowledgeable God is, as to whether He wants to allow human free will. He allows it, knowing perfectly well all the bad things that will result, because He thinks that is better than the alternative: us being a bunch of robots.

My daughter just came home and said she almost got into an accident on the freeway. So say she had actually gotten killed? Would I then say it was my fault because I allowed her to get a driver’s license? No. It’s understood that with driving comes a risk of getting injured or killed. Almost everyone takes that risk because it’s better than the alternative.

I deny that what God permits, He is responsible for. The very existence of other free wills that exist besides God and His decisions and freedom, means that He is not responsible, just as parents caused their children to come into existence, but are not responsible for every decision they make beyond the age of reason. He allows the evil that results for the sake of this freedom as the better choice of the two.

Most of the bad and evil things that happen, we blame God for. We’re always blame-shifting: between each other, and between us and God. I recently wrote about how we blame God for the Nazi Holocaust, which is ludicrous, seeing that we had every ability to prevent WWII and all that went with it from happening (at least the European part of it), by listening to Churchill’s warnings about Nazi military build-up.

The parole board is a decent argument / analogy. But I think we can defeat it by noting that God and human beings are on entirely different planes. There is, therefore, a sense in which He sets the world and human free will on their courses and then “gets out of it” and says in effect, “okay, have at it. I gave you everything you need to be happy, but also a free will, which includes the possibility of evil. You have to choose which course to take. Don’t blame ME when you make stupid or evil choices (and you will make many of those)”.

But human judges and prisoners are on the same plane, and we have to have a system of justice, just as God has “cosmic justice.” But the latter (most importantly) also includes the afterlife and is not just this life.

And so God sees all the evil we do, and provides the way past it, and the way for anyone to be saved and to have a fulfilled, joyful life (even with suffering). And He gives us the possibility of a blissful eternal life. THAT is where evil is finally controlled and obliterated, and where God’s perfect will (us being fulfilled and pain-free in union with Him) is supreme and in place for all eternity. For some reason He wants to leave it as it is now, before we get to that point. We don’t (and I think, can’t) totally understand that. But, as best I can make out, I think it comes down to what a truly free will entails (contrary choice).

It’s a matter of perspective. Once we are in heaven with God, and the “time” (metaphorically) is a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times more than the time we spent on earth, then all the suffering will be seen to be worth it, and God will be known and understood as quite a fair and loving Being after all.

But in atheism you have all the suffering and no cosmic justice (Mao and Hitler and Stalin were no more punished than anyone else) and it’s all meaningless in the end and we are annihilated. That’s the “problem of good” that’s a lot more serious than even the thorny problem of evil. I would certainly be in despair and take the nihilist view if I believed that.

I’ve written about this many times on my Philosophy page (2nd section down). Probably my most extensive single treatment is this paper:

Problem of Evil: Treatise on the Most Serious Objection (Is God Malevolent, Weak, or Non-Existent Because of the Existence of Evil and Suffering?) [2002]

First, let me say that this is a fairly considerable reply, thanks for taking the time!

I do have to start by saying, though, that I think the issue I was raising has become a little muddled with time and analogy; understandably so, but muddled just the same.

This wasn’t about human free will. I find that topic fascinating, and I will respond to what you’ve said, but, first, I want to refocus here and emphasize what the issue was.

This was a discussion about diabolic forces being allowed to act upon humanity. If Satan is truly active in the world, as Catholic doctrine would argue he is, the argument of free will cannot really be made for him, can it? The Architect of Malice cannot be said to be a beneficiary of that same liberty; judgment has been passed, sentence made. His prison has been prepared; its walls raised, its bars set. The key to such a jail rests entirely in the hands of the Almighty.

Hence, while you are making arguments about free will for humans, such arguments cannot be raised for diabolic influences. Malefic powers have no place in that equation, since their choice has already been made, their punishment levied, and any access to our world is solely at the discretion of God. Otherwise, the prison of Hell would be no prison at all.

This is in keeping with the Catechism, as I brought up initially: Any action Satan takes is expressly with God’s permission. Unlike human beings, who exist amongst each other and interact with one another naturally, the unholy princes of the Pit have no such special place to argue for freedom.

So, even if we were to otherwise completely agree on the matter of human free will, I would answer that diabolic powers and wicked spirits still act only and solely at the discretion of the divine.

Now… With that out of the way…

I have to start by saying that I don’t believe in libertarian free will. I don’t think this belief relies solely on materialism (though it is bolstered by it), as is evidenced by plenty of religious authors recognizing that divine omniscience naturally requires predestination, culminating in Calvin’s writings (whom, as I believe I’ve said already, I find clear-sighted on this point but essentially on this point only).

By way of simple proof:

1. Either a given effect is determined by a cause or set of causes, or it is stochastically random. That is, if something happens, it is either caused to happen by something else, or it arises entirely and unpredictably at random, regardless of prior events.

(This is not purely binary; an effect could theoretically have some non-random and some random causes, but the point is that a given individual cause must either be one or the other.)

2. If an effect is the result of random causes, it cannot be said to meaningfully arise from any intent or choice; it is random and is not occurring in relation to anything else, including any theoretical actor’s decision-making.

3. If it is the result of a set of causes, any time those exact same circumstances occur, the same result will follow. That is, if you rewound time, the exact same situation would always recur. In such a case, it is impossible for any actor to change what they would do, because they will always do what they’d do in that specific set of circumstances. While even small variations might change the outcome, an identical set will not.

Hence, the idea that people have free will – that we can be anything but products of causal chains – is not logically sound.

But… For the sake of argument, let’s set even that aside.

I still think it’d be reasonable to argue that free will is not a sufficient answer to the problem of evil within this theological framework, and the evidence of that answer likes in the idea of the World to Come.

It is said that, in the World to Come, there will be no sin, for the Law will be written on the hearts of all its inhabitants. This can be interpreted in one of two ways.

First, humans will exist in some state where they have free will but will somehow be sinless. If that is the case, free will is not incompatible with sinlessness and the problem of evil persists. Evil could be eliminated while retaining free will.

The other way to interpret it is that humans will no longer have free will, but instead be eternally bound to a morally positive state.

Myself, I don’t find terror in either of these situations. Either of them is better than what currently exists. If the price of everyone loving one another is people being unable to choose *not* to love one another… I can’t call that a negative. There are plenty of ways humanity’s will is currently limited already – we can’t fly just by wishing it, or banish undesired emotions, say – so I find no particular problem in accepting some limitations to banish others. It’s just a question of what those limitations are, whom they’re imposed by, etc.

But even if we grant that…

You bring up mentions of some of humanity’s worst atrocities, and say that they happened as a result of inaction on the part of good people, and I agree. In doing so, though, you set the very standard you’re trying to deny: That inaction is tantamount to tacit acceptance. As you ay, the world had every opportunity to prevent it, refused, and so was complicit (and I would count Churchill amongst the complicit, for his refusal to put a stop to the march of fascism in Spain by supporting the opposition there, but he saw it as too valuable a buffer against communism). Yet one person’s inaction does not excuse another’s. If we are, at the last judgment, to be held accountable for our own sins, with “But my brother-” never been allowed as an excuse, then surely the standard is the same.

If we hold the Great Powers of Europe responsible for their refusal to stand up and do the right thing, the same standard must surely apply to the Almighty. If inaction is culpability, then so much more the culpability of the most powerful. If we hold tiny mortals, with all their mortal fears and pains to suffer if they choose to risk everything they love in service of the common good, how much more heavy must the moral debt be on one unimpeachably mighty enough to do the job with no threat, no fear, no exhaustion?

I think you might offer a fair answer, for the record, about divine perspective. Perhaps our suffering means little to God; the depths of our agonies and miseries little more than children crying over a scraped knee in the perspective of a being who has seen stars be born and die. I think I could empathize with such a being and, if I stood before it and it acknowledged as such, admit it a benign flaw in the face of the cosmic good it provides.

But it’s still a flaw, and posits a God whose mind is alien to our own; who cannot understand our suffering and pain, and does not think it worthwhile to find a way around it. If we suffer, so what? It builds character. It posits a God who is not quite all-knowing or, if not that, not quite as perfectly compassionate.

I’ll conclude by saying that, once upon a time, I thought the same thing about atheism but, honestly, after ending up in that pool myself, my perspective’s only grown more compassionate? I don’t attribute that to atheism, mind, just… Getting older. I was a very dumb when I was younger, as young people tend to be (and have a right to be), and I am sure I will think myself just as dumb in ten years. Life’s like that.

The truth is… Reality’s awful sometimes. Bad people often do bad things and get away with it, and that’s miserable. But it’s not an excuse not to care, or to try.

I still care about other human beings. I still care about beauty and joy and happiness, and easing pain. I don’t have an objective reason for caring about any of those things, I just do, and those who do not will likely never agree with me on things and there’s nothing I can do to change that. There are things I take on faith still – that humans are, overall, basically good; that things will, on average, keep improving; that people can, through collective action, overcome their failings and improve the world for everyone; that compassion and love are worthwhile, and should be extended at every opportunity – and I don’t feel a particular need to seek objective justification for them, because I don’t think there is any.

There are not atoms of agape or molecules of mercy, but we can still make love real with our kindness and our actions. Maybe it seems dull or boring to an outsider but… They feel the same to me as they do to you. If nothing else, we can agree that compassion is a good thing and build common ground from there.

If you want me to review the rest of your works before commenting further, I’ll happily do so.

Cheers.

I don’t see how Satan and the demons are any different than human beings in this regard. They rebelled and were allowed to wreak havoc. Again, it’s God’s permissive will but not His perfect will. You appear to not make that distinction (which would collapse everything into God’s perfect will). You say they were judged. They were by being kicked out of heaven and out of the ranks of the obedient angels, but they have yet to be finally judged. Their judgment is inevitable because they made their choice against God.

The devil is not yet in hell, according to biblical and Christian theology. He will be sent there at the time of the general judgment / Second Coming (Rev 19:20; 20:10). The Bible, in both Job and Revelation, shows Satan being allowed to do evil, but not totally. He is partially constrained, and he (and demons) can be resisted by human beings:

Job 1:12 (RSV) And the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power; only upon himself do not put forth your hand.”

Job 2:6 And the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your power; only spare his life.”

Job 42:10, 12 And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job, . . . [12] And the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning . . .

Matthew 10:8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.

Mark 3:14-15 And he appointed twelve, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach [15] and have authority to cast out demons:

Mark 6:12-13 So they went out and preached that men should repent. [13] And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them.

Mark 16:17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons . . .

Luke 10:17-20 The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” [18] And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. [19] Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you. [20] Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

James 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Revelation 20:1-3, 7-10 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain. [2] And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, [3] and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years were ended. After that he must be loosed for a little while. . . . [7] And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison [8] and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the earth, that is, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. [9] And they marched up over the broad earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city; but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, [10] and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.Any action Satan takes is expressly with God’s permission.

Of course, just as is any action we take. You used exactly the right word: permission; as opposed to His perfect will. Catholic (and most Protestant) doctrine holds that human beings can do absolutely no good thing whatsoever without the prior enabling power of God’s grace. So in that sense, He makes possible all our actions. At the same time we freely cooperate with that grace, and so retain free will. It’s just that every good thing could not have been done without His grace.

The devil and his demons have no such grace, so that is the essential difference there. But they have freedom to tempt and cause evil to occur until Judgment Day, when they will lose even that. One might say they have a “suspended sentence.” :-)

I have to start by saying that I don’t believe in libertarian free will. I don’t think this belief relies solely on materialism (though it is bolstered by it), as is evidenced by plenty of religious authors recognizing that divine omniscience naturally requires predestination, culminating in Calvin’s writings (whom, as I believe I’ve said already, I find clear-sighted on this point but essentially on this point only).

Predestination is not incompatible with free will. Both are held together in a paradoxical relationship. It’s a very deep mystery and barely comprehensible by human minds, but this is mainstream Christian teaching. And how they go together, I explained above: we freely cooperate with God’s grace. It’s not “irresistible grace” (Calvin’s false teaching). And the damned aren’t predestined to hell for all eternity, with their own free will and choices having nothing to do with it (double predestination: another serious error).

My own soteriological view is Congruistic Molinism. It holds that God (being out of time and omniscient) takes onto account how we freely respond to His grace, in His decision to predestine the saved. Catholics do believe in predestination (it’s a dogma) — we have different schools of thought as to how that works — , but we don’t believe it’s inconsistent with free will, and we reject the predestination of the damned, coupled with a denial of their free will to choose heaven or hell. Calvinist doctrine makes God not only the author of evil, but an outright Evil Agent. It turns Him into something I would never choose to serve and worship. I understand that they don’t view it that way, but it is the inevitable logical reduction of their positions. And this is why I was always an Arminian as a Protestant.

I think, like most atheists, you are hyper-rational and can’t see the forest for the trees. You think free will is wiped out and can’t exist with an omniscient God Who predestines, and so you have been brought to despair and atheism. I don’t know your whole story but I know that “dichotomous / either/or” thinking is a central error in Protestantism. The idea of cooperation with God (or merit in Catholicism, when we do it the right way) is the solution to the perceived problem.

At any given point in life we have the prerogative to choose God or to rebel against Him. It’s not all foreordained: not every action we do. God knows what we will do, but it doesn’t follow that He caused everything we do (in the exclusionary sense that we have no causative influence). I always use the example of “knowing” that the sun will rise tomorrow. I don’t cause that at all, but I know with a very high degree of certainty that it will take place.

God ultimately caused it by bringing about the laws of physics, whereby the earth rotates and travels around the sun once a year. The earth secondarily caused this by continuing to rotate according to those laws (God need not “supervise” the laws of science every second). Foreknowledge is simply not the same as “micro-management causality / pan-causality” (to coin a phrase!). We really are free to choose for or against God; for good and not evil. At the same time, God already was the sole cause of a choice for good, through His grace.

God is like the Water Department. It sends me the water I need in my house. It sends the water to the faucet that goes into the hose to fill my backyard pool (where I will be today in a few hours). So one can always say that the Water Department was the cause of that water, for my own use. But we can also say that I caused it (secondary agent) to flow through the faucet by turning it on, and the hose also was a secondary agent, used to direct a bunch of water into my pool, or to my grass and flowers, or my car, as the case may be. Both things are true. The Bible clearly teaches this paradox in several passages:

Mark 16:20 (RSV) And they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it. Amen.

1 Corinthians 3:8-9 He who plants and he who waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.

1 Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me. (cf. 15:58; Gal 5:6, 6:7-9)

Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Philippians 2:12-13 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (cf. Titus 3:5-8)Hence, the idea that people have free will – that we can be anything but products of causal chains – is not logically sound.

This is untrue. One simply has to accept paradox and a “both/and” scenario of primary and secondary, or multiple / complex causation (which we see in life all around us), and to reject a linear, hyper-rationalistic either/or thinking. Chesterton said that the problem with a madman is not that he has no logic at all, but that he has nothing but logic.

First, humans will exist in some state where they have free will but will somehow be sinless. If that is the case, free will is not incompatible with sinlessness and the problem of evil persists. Evil could be eliminated while retaining free will.

Yes, that is true in heaven, because then we are no longer subject to original sin and the world, the flesh, and the devil. That’s the difference. Our free will choices are hampered by these opposing forces (and to see how subtle those are, read Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis). When we are finally redeemed, those forces are removed, so that we can freely always choose to do good and not sin, just as God does.

We could have done so all along, but we chose to rebel, and so God in effect had to “go to Plan B.” Plan B is a lot tougher road than God’s original Plan A would have been, because He has to work around all the evil and stupid choices we make as fallen human beings. But in the end we can be saved, if we will cease our rebellion and decide to follow Him.

If we hold the Great Powers of Europe responsible for their refusal to stand up and do the right thing, the same standard must surely apply to the Almighty.

That gets back to my earlier argument about God and human beings not being on the same plane. He creates us and lets us be truly free, which includes our choosing to rebel against Him, if that is our choice, just as any parent doesn’t say to their child, “you MUST love me!” He or she wants this to be a free, voluntary choice. Then it actually has meaning and depth.

So God created and then allowed us autonomy to do as we please. By the same token He created the universe and the laws of science, which now operate on their own, with minimal intervention from God. He does a miracles now and then, but it’s an exception. In my long paper that I linked to, I get into how God made scientific laws as they are and why He can’t (in a reasonable, predictable, uniformitarian universe) interfere with them every two seconds and do miracles all day long, one after another. I’ve expanded on that argument in other papers, in reply to atheist “demands” for massive miracles all the time from God, failing which they will get mad at Him as “unfair” and then deny His existence.

Perhaps our suffering means little to God; the depths of our agonies and miseries little more than children crying over a scraped knee in the perspective of a being who has seen stars be born and die.

This is not true at all, according to the biblical revelation. You’re talking about a so-called deist “god.” Jesus shows us how God cares about us. He stated:

Matthew 23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!”

Revelation 3:20-21 Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. [21] He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.

Jesus suffered horribly and died. He didn’t remove Himself (as God) from the suffering we go through. He, too, endured it. That’s love, not indifference.

In the end, the joys of heaven make up for anything we go through.

Romans 8:18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

This fact of a heavenly bliss that never ends changes everything. If you want to criticize Christianity, you have to take all of it into account, and a big part of it is the state of heavenly bliss for all eternity going forward.

It would be like accepting a deal of “if you are willing to endure a slight cut to your finger, I’ll give you an all-expenses-paid trip around the world for three months!” Who would refuse that deal? Heaven compared to our sufferings is infinitely more desirable than my weak analogy. It’s all a matter of perspective. You just have to believe it’s true. You have the opportunity to do just that, right now, as I share these things with you.

And this life isn’t all bad, either. I’ve gone through a lot of suffering in my life (my only brother and sister are both dead, etc.) but I am tremendously happy with my life, as a disciple of Jesus. He’s true to His word. There are many blessings before we get to heaven.

But it’s still a flaw, and posits a God whose mind is alien to our own; who cannot understand our suffering and pain, and does not think it worthwhile to find a way around it. If we suffer, so what? It builds character. It posits a God who is not quite all-knowing or, if not that, not quite as perfectly compassionate.

But He did find a way around it; we just don’t like it, because it’s not perfect bliss. He gave us a way through grace to have joy through suffering, and to have the greatest meaning in our lives. And once we pass this “test” of obedience and allegiance, then we are rewarded with heaven. You seem to think that’s not a worthwhile “transaction.” I think it is the greatest conceivable reward and ultimate solution to our suffering on earth.

But atheism offers . . . nothing . . . no ultimate meaning to life, no solid reason why anyone should even seek to be good and do good; no enduring existence that lasts forever. You yourself freely admit this (you are consistent):

I still care about beauty and joy and happiness, and easing pain. I don’t have an objective reason for caring about any of those things, I just do, . . . I don’t feel a particular need to seek objective justification for them, because I don’t think there is any.

You say: “humans are, overall, basically good.” This drastically undercuts the argument from evil, which always super-emphasizes all the wicked things human beings do to each other. You have to explain why all these bad things keep happening: how human beings commit such horrible evils if in fact they are “basically good”??!!! You have to make out that it’s all conditioning and education and being sheep or what not. But it’s much deeper than that.

I say that only Christianity’s doctrine of human beings capable of both great good and the most depraved evil, explains the actual course of human history. And so the Nazi Holocaust happened because a bunch of people followed their basest evil instincts and went wild with it (the mass genocide of helpless children in the womb is an even worse manifestation of this evil). But the Nazis were defeated because people also had enough good in them and enough of God’s grace to defeat this massive societal evil.

In atheism, we all die and cease to exist: the good and the evil alike. There is no ultimate justice or “cosmic justice.” That’s what atheism offers. Thank God atheism isn’t true. But the despair and futility you think you see in Christianity is actually in your system of belief. That’s what you have to grapple with: how to come to terms with that dreadful reality of a godless, meaningless, horrific, dark, bleak universe. You want to do good (I believe) you because you still have the “fumes” of Christianity and enough grace in you to still desire it. If God didn’t exist, you wouldn’t have these impulses to do good and to love; to care about other human beings.

If there is no God (as you either believe or suspect), then just forget about “Him” (i.e., that issue). Let Christians go on with their “delusions” and “fantasies.” Your problem is how to create some inadequate partial meaning without a God or ultimate purpose.

So that is the Christian counter-reply: God offers heaven as His ultimate solution to our suffering. He offers grace and the power and ability to have great joy and happiness in this life, even alongside great suffering. It all has a purpose. You have no reason or purpose in atheism. You freely admitted it. I didn’t even have to make the argument I am making. You grant and concede it (and you are correct!).

And I think that should give you pause and reconsider just which worldview is 1) true, and 2) offers joy and happiness and meaning. The true illusion or delusion or fantasy is an atheist world in which we somehow work up the gumption for life to have “meaning” even though we know down deep that it has none. That’s not reality. That is pretending that reality is not what it is (granting the premise of atheism), and going on in life as if there is indeed meaning (a la existentialism).

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Photo credit: Matryx (4-19-20) [Pixabay / Pixabay License]

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Summary: Excellent, substantive dialogue with a friendly, non-insulting agnostic on the problem of evil: that thorniest of issues; with my retort regarding the corresponding atheist “problem of good.”