The version of the Problem of Evil that works essentially goes like this:
You hold the idea of a All Good, All Powerful God in your head, then you think of some of the more sick, evil things in the world world, and you're supposed to react "Pfft, right." I oversimplify, but really, I think that argument is pretty effective. That's induction for you.
Well, I propose that there's a similar argument against Naturalism. The part of naturalism that I'm concerned with is the part that says life in general, and humans in particular, evolved from forces concerned only with survival and reproduction.
So, I hold the idea of a "Species Evolved Purely for Survival and Reproduction" in my head, and then I think of a 'Where's the Beef?' tee-shirt, or perhaps pogs (remember pogs?), and I get that very same "Pfft, right" reaction. I realize this argument isn't very rigorous, but then, I don't think my inspiration, The inductive Problem of Evil, is very rigorous either.
So, is my argument inductively strong to you? Does it have any obvious defeaters? Is there way to turn it into a [i]deductive[/i] argument that fails as well as the deductive Problem of Evil?
I’d press you for more examples against naturalism. I don’t know that T-shirt. If you can come up with some widely known things that aren’t functional to procreation - but that argument is hard to make. Life is pretty seductive. Many things are made to seduce. You get some bizarre shit if mediocre DNA struggling to get by creates something to seduce and multiply. That T shirt might fall into that catergory. Absurdity is relaxing. Laughing keeps you fit. Survival of the fittest.
Well, I’ll use an example that every reader here is sure to know. My avatar. A small, electronic representation of a fictional character, who is a gigantic robotic dinosaur protagonist. Now, I’m not saying that someone didn’t invent Kiryu in order to make money so he could buy food and get laid. I’ll buy that. I’m saying that if Survival and Reproduction are the only factors in the equation, there’s much simpler ways to get it done, and that my examples show that it’s obvious (pfft, obvious) that there’s more to the human experience than Survival and Reproduction.
As far as coming up with more examples, it’s not hard- anyone should be able to come up with plenty of them, in fact, the strength of the argument lies primarily in that I don’t have to provide the examples anymore (they are apparent to everyone), once the general theme I’m after has been established.
Reproduction is survival on a genetic level (the survival of one’s genes). So the question is whether survival is all there is. I’d say no. For what is the use of survival? Why survive? In order to survive? What nonsense!
I adhere to Nietzsche’s idea, that not the will to survival is essential, but the will to power (to grow, to flourish). The joy of flourishing justifies existence.
I hate to be pedantic, but that’s not precisely what evolution says and the distinction is relevant in this situation. Evolution (which I’ll conflate with natural selection) says that if we examine a species and identify certain traits that help it survive, those traits developed from an ancestor whose descendants underwent random mutations from which natural selection eventually picked the traits we see in the species today. It doesn’t say that all traits are developed for survival and reproduction. In fact you may recall that some of the best evidence for evolution, vestigial organs, has to do with traits that are not helpful for survival or reproduction.
But perhaps your point is that in order to get the problem of evil to be a compelling argument against god, we need to be pedantic and careful about what we mean by evil and god. And I agree – which is why I don’t bother with such arguments. They’re never conclusive because, in attempting to making them precise, we find we don’t know precisely who this god is and what precisely it means for him to be ‘good’ or ‘evil’ or ‘powerful’. That’s because religion has little to do with precision and deductive arguments. It’s about the belief that there is this big invisible guy who made us, loves us, fights for us, even sacrifices for us. Try to make that precise, and you’ll have sucked the life out of your religion for sure.
When I argue for atheism, I stay far away from precise definitions of religion and treat the religious experience as a phenomenon to explain. I argue that the best (most fitting with the facts, most coherent, most useful, most investigatively fruitful, etc) explanation for religious experience is naturalistic. Thus those who prefer such ‘best’ explanations to any old explanation (that is, scientific minds) should adopt atheism, at least tentatively.
I think Daniel Dennett does a pretty good job of arguing this in “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon”. He doesn’t treat the historical claims of Christianity and Judaism, which you need to do to fully investigate them. But from what I’ve read I’ve concluded that neither has a compelling historical case.
I think it might be interesting to have a thread with a wide-ranging investigation of best explanations for religion (and particular religions). Get all the historical, sociological, psychological, physical evidence on the scales and see how it adds up. What do you think Ucci?
Well, I wasn’t trying to argue against evolution- I happen to think evolution occured. I was arguing against naturalism, which in this case is a view of Evolution + Materialism. Certainly, evolution itself doesn’t rule out the possibility that there are forces other than survival that shape a creature’s traits. But I would think materialism would, yes? It certainly seems to me that there’s enough scientists/psychologists in the world trying to explain human behavior in terms of survival of the fittest, that even if incorrect, the idea must be fairly widespread.
And you're right, I'm making a point about the Problem of Evil as much as I am Naturalism- though I still think my argument 'works' in the sense I meant it, and I'm not putting it up [i] just [/i] to be coy. I really do think the existence of absurd, unncessary things in life points us away from humans being survival-driven creatures only, and points us towards the idea of creativity being a more central force in reality.
I agree that this is the best angle against from which to attack theism in general, and religion especially. Apparently we disagree about how those attacks fare.
Sounds like it could be very productive, though most of it would be way, way out of my field.
You know, pretending for the moment that I have a field, and that that field is ‘Philosophy’ and not ‘Playstation 2’.
Anyways, one caution- It’s only a productive examination if religions (or a religion) being true is considered as one of the possible explanations- no Humean “Testimony of a Miracle Can never be believed, no matter what” attitudes will get us very far!
Well, in all fairness I think the hypothesis includes trying to show that the falsity of such events also indicates the falsity in the belief in God. So it would be productive in that it would attempt to prove the hypothesis that there is more evidence showing miracles and the like don’t really exist and the religion being false is the other possible explanation. I think there would be more historical empirical proof of the religion being false.
The idea that there’s no “purpose” to life on this planet other than the subjective one is a scary though to most. The fact that we might only amount to an enormous, super complex version of a DNA copying itself doesn’t sound very appealing or flattering. But it is still impossible to deny how amazing it is that we occurred at all, that out of all the random chances evolution took, it turned out human beings with our intelligence and emotions. While realizing that it had to turn out SOME way out of all the random possible ways it could have happened, so it’s not really amazing, at the same time the way everything turned out IS amazing and breathtaking from a subjective point of view. It can be painful at times. There is no denying we are experiencing “life,” even if life is simply a label we’ve given a meaningless arrangement of atoms to differentiate them from the other kinds of meaningless arrangments.
The problem of evil debate assumes that evil exists. The only way evil could exist is if one believed in God, or at the very least an objective moral truth. This is where the argument falls apart. Evil doesn’t exist.
Something mutates, and becomes harmful to the whole living system.
The living system’s immune-system was imperfect.
My version of the world evil is: “that which is unhealthy.”
Though the word “evil” is often used within doublethink, I’ll try to straiten my own version out, atleast partially.
Q[@selves]:
Are sharks evil?
Is Lead evil?
Is harsh acid evil?
Is hate evil?
Are lions evil?
etc, etc, etc.
Each of these are dangerous IF you are exposed to them in the ‘wrong’ way.
Q:
Is war evil?
Is rape evil?
Is verbal abuse evil?
Each of tehse are dangerous IF you are exposed to them in the ‘wrong’ way.
YarRr, evil is the stamp which man has placed upon that which has most drastically contradicted his tender expectations.
War & rape seem more evil then bacteria and viruses do, BUT, BACTERIA AND VIRUSES ARE MORE HARMFUL AND CAUSED MORE SUFFERING ON EARTH THEN WAR & RAPE COMBINED.
The mistake you make, Ucci (IMOHO) is that you see evolution as some mindful force with a plan- a surrogate God, if you will. You think certain things couldn’t be the result of evolution because, how could a sense of humor (or irony, or tatoos) help us survive better. But that misses the point- we don’t know if they help or not, and neither does evolution. More importantly, it doesn’t care! If those traits help us, they’ll probably be passed along. If they hinder us, the are unlikely to be passed along. If they’re totally neutral (ie they don’t affect us one way or the other) it’s a crapshoot.
But the need to ascribe a reason for these things and equating it to reason is fallacy. If you flip a coin seven times and get three heads and four tails, you may wonder why you got an extra tail. If you get seven heads you’ll tell your grandkids about it. What is it about coincidence that holds such power over us?
It seems to me that one of our evolutionary traits is pattern recognition. We don’t have claws or fangs, nor scales or hides, but we do have intelligence. A big part of this seems (to me) to be our pattern identification algorithym. A dog can be trained to associate a bell chime with food. But we have more advanced faculties. This advanced ability to correlate cause & effect has worked well for us: we can equate certain signs with impending weather; we can ascertain that fire=cooked meat; we can tell penicillion molds kill bacteria.
But it seems to me an unfortunate side effect or our advanced pattern recognition wiring is the need to see patterns where none exist. We see the video lottery machine pay out twice in an hour & we see it as ‘hot’. We play a couple great rounds of golf while wearing a beat up Old Navy hat & it becomes our ‘lucky hat.’ We manage to drive home a few times after a few too many drinks and think we’re ‘bullet proof.’
I guess what I’m getting at is not everything has a design, but design is hardwired into us. By natural selection, I guess. Does that mean that very programming has a ‘reason’? That’s a trick question. The real answer is this: that’s a trait we have, but time will tell whether it helps us or dooms us.
Til then we’ll keep thinking the next roll will be a seven, we’ll keep making out the shapes of animals in the clouds, & keep seeing God’s guiding hand at work in our every day lives. We need those patterns for our world to make sense.
[Naturalist explains it away]: “Maybe there was a tornado near a swamp, or, um, well, you saw the frogs jump really high and stuff…”
And I’d like to see someone disprove all of these: near-death.com/
It is far easier for a Naturalist to ignore what he cannot explain, then it is for the Paranormalist to explain what cannot be explained. If explanation is the only path towards acceptance of reality, then Naturalists claim to know exactly what is real, even if something unreal has literally happened.
Well, a minor problem with that. I don't think that things like humor or whatever would be the result of a single gene mutation- quite a few things would have to happen to the brain to bring that about. It's not as if a human-like creature was born with a single mutation, that made him think stuff was funny, and he rose to dominance through sheer circumstance.
Another point to keep in mind, is that I'm not proposing theism as an alternative explanation to things than naturalism. If I were, I would agree with you. "It seems unlikely to me that natural selection could produce The California Raisins, so...what if there was this Super Powerful Guy..." Yeah, that would be totally implausible. I'm coming from the position that theism and naturalism are both views previously proposed for unrelated reasons. I hold them both in my hand, and weigh them in light of the fact that the California Raisins exist. From that perspective, an atheistic universe totaly gives me the 'pfft' reaction.
Well, that’s a good point, but are we talking about coincidence here? It seems to me that naturalism has to account for everything. If there is humor, if there is absurdity, those things have natural causes, because natural causes are the only sorts of causes there are. From what you’ve said, though, I do think that it’s more plausible to explain absurdity as some sort of coincidental situation that slipped through the cracks of natural selection, rather than trying to break “H R Puff n’ Stuff” down into terms of survival of the fittest.
I'm not convinced, though, that absurdity in human behavior (especially considering the amount of time we spend on it) is analogous to the sorts of meaningless coincidences you talk about.
Part of my argument, in fact, is an attempt to criticize theistic arguments. So many times I’ve heard a theist posit God because of all the stability, order, and complexity in the universe. Stability, order, and complexity have always seemed to me to be exactly the kinds of things I’d expect from an atheistic world!
One last question- do you think there’s a fair criticism of the Problem of Evil in my argument from Absurdity? That is, do they operate in fundamentally the same way, and if one fails, is there a good chance the other fails in the same sort of way?
The real answer is this: that’s a trait we have, but time will tell whether it helps us or dooms us.