God: The Failed Hypothesis (29 page)

5. “Perhaps God has a different conception of evil from ours.

Maybe what we think of as evil is good.”

We trust our own judgment on the evil of gratuitous suffering. No one can conceive of a reason God could have for allowing so much suffering. Why should we worship a God who allows acts that we regard as unspeakable? If God has a different conception of evil from ours, then so much the worse for God. He is then nothing more than an evil potentate. He might have power, but he has no moral authority and no one should worship him. “Good” and “evil” are our words and they name our concepts. It is confused thinking to suppose that some God’s opinion would make any difference in our concepts.

6. “Perhaps there is some underlying purpose served by all the evil in the world, but we humans are not smart enough to comprehend it. Have faith.”

What could that possibly be? Again, why should we blindly accept acts that go against our very nature? Why would God give us a nature that finds his actions so reprehensible?

7. “God is not responsible for evil. The Devil is.”

The Judeo-Christian-Islamic God is stronger than the devil and so is still ultimately responsible.

8. “If we simply weaken the definition of God, then the existence of God may be compatible with the existence of evil.

Thus, for example, he might be unable to instantly eliminate all the evil.”

While the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God described in scriptures is hardly benevolent, the faithful of these religions are far more likely to ignore unpleasant scriptural passages than abandon belief in a benevolent God.

A huge philosophical and theological literature can be found on the problem of evil, which need not be summarized here. As throughout this book, the case will be presented as a scientific one. We have the undeniable empirical fact of considerable suffering in the world and have no reason to believe that the great bulk of that suffering is necessary. We have the hypothesis of a powerful God who is fully capable of alleviating all but the surely minimal suffering that is absolutely necessary. Many theologians argue that God has his own reasons for so much suffering, which then is, by definition, good. Our deepest instincts disagree and recognize unnecessary suffering as evil.

An Evil God?

We have seen that relaxing one of the Os, such as omniscience or omnipotence, can defeat the argument from evil against the existence of the 30 God. We can also relax omnibenevolence.

As should be clear to anyone who simply sits down and reads the Bible or Qur’an, the God described in these scriptures is hardly benevolent by normal human standards. Still, if you make Euthyphro’s choice, then whatever God does is good by definition. In that case, for example, genocide and slavery are good.

In the previous chapter we saw that the Old Testament condones slavery. It also sanctions genocide: “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Per’izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb’usites. Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither you go, lest it become a snare in the midst of you. You shall tear down their altars, and break their pillars, and cut down their Ashe’rim” (Exod. 34:11-13, Revised Standard Version).

Indeed, in the Old Testament, God admits he is the source of evil: “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the
LORD
, who do all these things” (Isa. 45:7, Revised Standard Version).

The God of the Bible, if he exists, is not omnibenevolent by commonly accepted standards. At best, he is more like the dual God of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and perhaps other religions—part good and part evil—or two separate but equal gods (or a pantheon of gods).

Interestingly, many Christians seem to regard Satan as a source of evil independent of God. Immediately after the September 11, 2001, tragedy, many (though by no means all) of the Christian clergy blamed it on the devil and not God
¹¹
. This implies that either the devil is an equally powerful, autonomous separate God, which is no longer monotheism, or a part of God himself, which is no longer omnibenevolence.

If the theology of a dual god had survived, then we would have no problem of evil. Or, to put it better, evil would be a problem but we could blame it on God. However, monotheistic Christianity (albeit with the Trinity) had become the dominant religion in Europe in the fourth century when it gained the favor of Emperor Constantine (a pretty evil character in his own right
¹²
). Over the centuries, other variations were declared heretical and obliterated. In the doctrine that developed, Satan is still the creation of God but a fallen angel rather than a coequal deity. In that case, God is still the creator of evil.

We are once again confronted with the undeniable fact that our instincts about good and evil take precedence over supposed divine commands, when those commands offend both the common sense and the reason that has been cultivated over the centuries as humankind has gradually and incompletely evolved from brutish predecessors.

In the language of science, the empirical fact of unnecessary suffering in the world is inconsistent with a god who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Observations of human and animal suffering look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.

Notes

¹
In a dialogue on religion with other scientists in 1999, quoted from “The Constitution Guarantees Freedom From Religion” an open letter to US vice presidential candidate Senator Joseph Lieberman, issued by the Freedom From Religion Foundation on August 28, 2000.

²
Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier, eds.,
The Impossibility of God
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), p. 59.

³
The dilemma is presented in Plato’s
Euthyphro,
which is discussed in many philosophy books.

⁴
Kai Nielsen,
Ethics without God,
rev. ed. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990), p. 10. :

⁵
Harold S. Kushner,
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
(New York: Avon Books, 1987).

⁶
Warner Bros., 1977.

⁷
J. J. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,”
Mind
64 (1955): 200-12, reprinted in
The Impossibility of God,
ed. Martin and Monnier, pp. 61-105.

⁸
Erik J. Wielenberg,
Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 51.

⁹
Julian Baggini and Jeremy Stranghorn,
What Philosophers Think
(London: Continuum, 2003), p. 109.

¹⁰
Michael Huemer, “Some Failed Responses to the Problem of Evil,” Talk at the Theology Forum, University of Colorado at Boulder, February 16, 2005.

¹¹
See my discussion of religious reactions to the events of September 11, 2001, in Victor J. Stenger,
Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), pp. 9-12.

¹²
Jonathan Kirsch,
God Against the Gods: The History of the War between Monotheism and Polytheism
(New York: Viking Compass, 2004).

Why would a perfect God create a universe in which such huge amounts of suffering occur, when such suffering does not bring into existence any of the goods required to absorb the suffering and make the situation on balance a good one?

—Nicholas Everitt
¹

Disagreeing With the Data

I
n this book I have applied the scientific process of hypothesizing models and testing those models against the empirical data to the question of God. Now, I am sure to hear the objection “science isn’t everything.” Of course it isn’t. However, model building is not limited to science but is commonly carried out in everyday life, including religious activities. The brain does not have the capacity to save the time, direction, and energy of each photon that hits the eyes. Instead it operates on a simplified picture of objects, be they rocks, trees, or people, assigning them general properties that do not encompass every detail
²
. Science merely objectifies the procedure, communicating by speech and writing among individuals who then attempt to reach agreement on what they all have seen and how best to represent their collective observations.

Religion carries out a similar process, although one in which agreement is generally asserted by authority rather than by consensus. From humanity’s earliest days, gods have been imagined who possessed attributes that people could understand and to which they could relate. Gods and spirits took the form of the objects of experience: the sun, Earth, moon, animals, and humans.

The gods of the ancient Egyptians had the form of animals. The gods of the ancient Greeks had the form of humans. The God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has the form of a powerful, auto-cratic, male king enthroned high above his subjects. Each seems to have developed from the culture of the day. If the process continued on to today, we would all worship cellular phones.

By dealing in terms of models of God that are based on human conceptions, we avoid the objection that the “true” God may lie beyond our limited cognitive capabilities. When I demonstrate that a particular God is rejected by the data, I am not proving that all conceivable gods do not exist. I am simply showing beyond a reasonable doubt that a God with the specific, hypothesized attributes does not exist. Belief aside, at the very minimum the fact that a specific God does not agree with the data is cause enough not to assume the existence of that God in the practices of everyday life.

The exact relationship between the elements of scientific models and whatever true reality lies out there is not of major concern. When scientists have a model that describes the data, that is consistent with other established models, and that can be put to practical use, what else do they need? The model works fine in not only describing the data but also in enabling practical applications. It makes absolutely no difference whether or not an electron is “real” when we apply the model of electrons flowing in an electronic circuit to design some high-tech device. Whatever the intrinsic reality, the model describes what we observe, and those observations are real enough.

Similarly, it does not matter from a practical standpoint whether the “real” God resembles any of the gods whose empirical consequences we have examined. People do not worship abstractions. They worship a God with qualities they can comprehend. Since we have shown that a God who answers prayers does not agree with the data, then a religious person is wasting her time praying for some favor of such a God. If praying worked, the effects would be objectively observed. They are not.

Let me then summarize the gods we have shown to disagree with the data. Again, an uppercase G will be used when the attributes apply specifically to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God.

Gods Who Disagree with the Data

1. A God who is responsible for the complex structure of the world, especially living things, fails to agree with empirical fact that this structure can be understood to arise from simple natural processes and shows none of the expected signs of design. Indeed, the universe looks as it should look in the absence of design.

2. A God who has given humans immortal souls fails to agree with the empirical facts that human memories and personalities are determined by physical processes, that no nonphysical or extraphysical powers of the mind can be found, and that no evidence exists for an afterlife.

3. A God whose interactions with humans, including miraculous interventions, have been reported in scriptures is contradicted by the lack of independent evidence that these miraculous events took place and the fact that physical evidence now convincingly demonstrates that some of the most important biblical narratives, such as the Exodus, never took place.

4. A God who miraculously and supernaturally created the universe fails to agree with the empirical fact that no violations of physical law were required to produce the universe, its laws, or its existence rather than nonexistence. It also fails to agree with established theories, based on empirical facts, which indicate that the universe began with maximum entropy and so bears no imprint of a creator.

5. A God who fine-tuned the laws and constants of physics for life, in particular human life, fails to agree with the fact that the universe is not congenial to human life, being tremendously wasteful of time, space, and matter from the human perspective. It also fails to agree with the fact that the universe is mostly composed of particles in random motion, with complex structures such as galaxies forming less than 4 percent of the mass and less than one particle out of a billion.

6. A God who communicates directly with humans by means of revelation fails to agree with the fact that no claimed revelation has ever been confirmed empirically, while many have been falsified. No claimed revelation contains information that could not have been already in the head of the person making the claim.

7. A God who is the source of morality and human values does not exist since the evidence shows that humans define morals and values for themselves. This is not “relative morality.” Believers and nonbelievers alike agree on a common set of morals and values. Even the most devout decide for themselves what is good and what is bad. Nonbelievers behave no less morally than believers.

8. The existence of evil, in particular, gratuitous suffering, is logically inconsistent with an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent God (standard problem of evil).

What If

The existence of the God worshiped by most Jews, Christians, and Muslims is not only missing from but also is contradicted by empirical data. However, it need not have turned out that way.