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| The Auschwitz concentration camp |
In a previous
article on the hunting hymenoptera I mentioned the problem
of evil, often called the problem of pain,
the well-known title of a book by CS Lewis. Although this question is mainly ethical
or philosophical, it also has some relationship with science, as will be seen
at the end of this post.
We can consider two
different types of the problem of evil:
- Human evil, caused by man. The Auschwitz concentration
camp has become its most mentioned paradigm.
- Natural pain, the fact that natural processes can cause severe pain to humans and other living beings.
If
there were a good God, he would not have allowed Auschwitz (for example). As
Auschwitz happened, a good God does not exist.
This argument is
very easy to disprove. At the creation of our universe, God had to choose
between two possibilities: populate it with free intelligent beings, or with mere
puppets with no choice. In the former case, human evil is inevitable; in the
second, it wouldn’t exist. The answer to the argument is this: If you were in God’s place and could create intelligent beings,
would you make them free or puppets? As a researcher in the
field of artificial life, I am sure that I would chose the first, for the
latter would not be interesting.
A further
consequence of the problem of human evil is the problem of divine justice: evil
should be punished in some way. Every religion has chosen a different solution
to this problem. The religions of India, for instance, believe that the evil we
do in this life will be punished in our next reincarnation. Judaism held that
the sins of fathers are visited upon their children. Christianity offers a
different solution: God became man and died to take on himself the consequences
of all the evil that we have ever caused.
The problem of
natural pain is more complicated, because usually we cannot blame man. Atheists
use it frequently as an argument against the existence of God, with a very
similar formulation to the previous one:
If
there were a good God, he would not allow so much pain in nature. As there is
much pain, a good God does not exist.
In the post
on hunting hymenoptera I mentioned two possible answers to the problem of pain in nature. A more drastic approach to the problem has been offered by the
American philosopher Alvin Plantinga, who uses the problem of pain to prove the
existence of God with an
argument like this one:
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| Alvin Plantinga |
In this
world there is appalling and horrifying evil, when the act itself is
horrible. Those evils are recognized as horrible by every huma being, atheist
or believer. But if God does not exist, the concept of a horrifying evil makes no
sense. Ergo God exists.
Is it true that the
concept of horrifying evil makes no
sense if God does not exist? First, let us consider that science by itself cannot
reach ethical conclusions. Science deals exclusively with facts and
explanations of the facts, so it works exclusively with indicative sentences: this is so; this explains that. Elementary logic tells us that, from two
premises in the indicative mode, it is impossible to draw a conclusion in the
imperative. Science cannot deduce or induce an ethical principle. Ethics is
beyond the scope of science. To reach ethical conclusions, we need premises in
the imperative mode: do this; don’t do that. Where do they come from?
Natural selection? Do we have ethical standards because they are good for our
survival? But then horrifying evil (an evil independent from our species) would
not exist. All those evils used by atheists in their argument against God’s existence
would not be true evils. A wasp causing pain to a worm (if it really does cause
it) would not affect our survival and wouldn’t be evil. So the atheist argument is a blatant case of anthropocentrism and does not hold water.
Manuel Alfonseca
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