atheism for lent, day 9: what the hell, “God”?

GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS.

After yesterday’s brief interlude, I’m back on the regularly scheduled AfL…um…STUFF.

Next up is J.L. (John Leslie) Mackie, an analytic philosopher I’d never heard of until this year’s AfL. (Although it’s possible I came across him in my previous two incomplete attempts at AfL in ’19 and ’20, I just don’t remember.) Mackie’s got a real issue with the idea of “God” because there’s also unimaginable evil in the world. I really can’t blame him.

In brief, Mackie’s essay “Evil and Omnipotence” presents his argument thusly:

In the believer’s concept of God, God is:

omnipotent (all-powerful)
and
omnibenevolent (all-good).

BUT: evil exists.

All three statements cannot be true. If any two are true, the third one must be false.

If God is all-good and all-powerful, the God won’t let evil exist.
If evil exists and God is all-good, then God is unable to put an end to evil, which makes God not all-powerful.
If evil exists and God is all-powerful, then God is not willing to put an end to evil, which makes God not all-good.

A person who insists that all three are true (God is all-powerful, God is all-good, evil exists) is abandoning logic and reason.

Mackie goes on to name a few ways in which believers try to intellectually maneuver around this issue (“God willingly limits God’s power”; “evil is just an illusion”; etc.) so that “evil” doesn’t have to be a problem for them. Mackie offers some refutations to these maneuvers, but I don’t feel like going into that. (That part’s very brief anyway.) My contention is that someone who maneuvers like this might not feel that “evil” is a problem for them, but that certainly doesn’t make it unproblematic for the rest of us.

We all are perfectly capable of rationalizing and justifying so that we never have to confront anything that challenges our comfortable and comforting paradigms.

Me, I keep going back to what I wrote about last week: that as a mother, I cannot fathom allowing my daughter to suffer if I can prevent it. (Note: I don’t mean “feel pain” or “have bad/negative experiences” or “experience the consequences of her choices”; I mean let her SUFFER in all the tortuous definition of the word.)

Sure, humans have free will! (Although maybe that’s not so sure, I dunno, that’s above my paygrade at the moment.) Sure, God doesn’t want automatons for worshipers! Sure, God has to give us myriad shades of gray to choose from, or at least a b&w binary, so that we can actually make a choice! (If “good” is the only option, then it’s not a choice.) Sure, I get all that. The “free will” counter-argument to the problem of evil (or Evil, if you prefer) is one that has satisfied me in the past.

BUT.

If my kid exercises her free will to step out into traffic, I am sure as hell going to yank her back to safety. If my kid exercises her free will to bully another kid, I am sure as hell going to step in and make her stop. If my kid chooses to go outside while a tornado is raging, I am sure as hell going to pull her to safety before her inexperience gets her killed.

(SIDE NOTE: I never used the phrase “sure as hell” until I stopped believing that hell was a “sure” [read: real] thing.)

So if I, as a mother, love my child enough to keep her from experiencing/causing permanent damage to herself/others, thereby negating her free will, then why doesn’t this allegedly wiser-and-more-loving-than-me God deal with “God’s children”/humans the same way?

117 billion sentient lives. 117 billions sites of suffering/potential suffering.

117 billion individual apologies and restitutions?