For Further Reading
7
God, Evil and Morality
Chad Meister
One of the most significant objections to belief in God—an objection which has transcended the ages—is called the “problem of evil.” Perhaps one of the first persons to succinctly delineate the problem was Epicurus, a Greek philosopher from the third century B.C.:
Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?[1]
More recently, Sam Harris restates the objection:
Of course, people of all faiths regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil.[2]
There is more than one problem latent in these words; in fact, there are various kinds of problems related to evil for those who believe in God. One is called the “logical problem of evil.” It claims that the following two statements contradict one another:
(1) God exists as an all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good being.
(2) Evil exists.
Since premise (2) is obviously true, premise (1) must be false. So God (defined as an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good being—as most Christians, Muslims and Jews believe) must not exist.
Most people writing at the popular level aren’t aware that professional philosophers of religion, theists and atheists alike have agreed in recent years that this version of the problem of evil has been decisively rebutted and is therefore unsuccessful.[3] That kind of consensus doesn’t come very often in philosophy! There is no logical contradiction between the two claims, for it could be the case that an all-powerful, all-knowing and omnibenevolent God has good reasons for allowing evil to exist and persist—perhaps, for example, for the greater good of one or more persons.[4]
There are other versions of the problem which have not been so successfully rebutted;[5] much recent work has been done on them as well, and there are persuasive responses to each of them.[6] The New Atheists, however, are apparently unaware of the different forms of the problem and the various responses offered—or if they are aware of them, they tend to ignore them and continue to rehash “the problem” as though no responses even exist.
I think it’s time the tables are turned, for it’s not just the believer in God who has an apparent problem regarding evil. Everyone must provide an account of the evil which exists in the world, and of the various worldview options it seems clear to me that the atheistic account is the least successful. As a matter of fact, when it comes to the existence of evil in our world it’s the atheists who should be on the defensive!
If evil truly exists, what we could call “objective evil”—then there also exist objective moral values, moral values which are binding on all people, whether they acknowledge them as such or not. If rape, racism, torture, murder, government-sanctioned genocide and so forth are objectively evil, what makes them so? What makes them truly evil, rather than simply activities we dislike? What made the atrocities of the Nazis evil, even though Hitler and his thugs maintained otherwise? One cannot consistently affirm both that there are no objective moral values, on the one hand, and that rape, torture and the like are objectively morally evil on the other. If there are objective moral values, then there must be some basis—some metaphysical foundation—for their being so.
Interestingly, the New Atheists, including Richard Dawkins, appear to affirm some form of moral objectivism; they believe that some things (such as racism) are really evil and some things (such as generosity) are really good. But what grounds their moral positions? On what basis is it right and good to care about one’s neighbor rather than to steal from her? What justification is there for affirming that it is better to help the poor and marginalized than to take advantage of them?
Dawkins, Harris and others routinely denounce the God of the Bible as morally monstrous and Christianity as morally pernicious and evil. What substantiates the claim of an atheist that the God of Christianity is evil and unjust? What basis do they have for making such judgments?
The Foundation of Morality
William James once claimed, “If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one.”[7] There may well be some atheists who do not want a world of moral reality; thankfully, the New Atheists are not in that category—they do want such a world. And yet they maintain that a person can live a good moral life without God in the picture. Christopher Hitchens, for example, says that it is “insulting” and “appalling” to claim that one does not know right and wrong without a God. He bemoans the “irritating mantle of righteousness” allegedly put forth by the religious faithful in their claim that only they (and not atheists) can make moral assessments. He puts forth the challenge to “name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever.”[8]
But no one is arguing that atheists cannot utter ethical statements or live good, moral lives. Of course they can. This should be an obvious fact for Christians. In the New Testament book of Romans, the apostle Paul says:
When the Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires . . . [t]hey show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them. (Rom 2:14-15 NRSV)
Whether people believe in God’s existence or know much if anything about God or the Bible is irrelevant to the issue at hand. When a person is functioning properly—and not censoring, repressing or ignoring her conscience—she knows right from wrong, good from evil. But believing that something is right or wrong and justifying one’s belief that something is right or wrong are two very different matters.
In believing in morality without justifying morality, the New Atheists are confusing an epistemic (knowledge) issue with an ontological (foundational existence) one.[9] Believing something is one thing—having a foundation for that belief is quite another. For example, someone could believe that extraterrestrial beings exist and continually monitor happenings on the earth. Perhaps they do. But such a belief would be based on grounds which are suspect, to say the least. Similarly, the New Atheists can believe in right and wrong, good and evil. But what grounds their moral positions? What makes them more than mere subjective opinions?
Richard Dawkins maintains that we know right from wrong. Daniel Dennett affirms moral realism; he believes that moral values are objective features of the world. Christopher Hitchens uses the terms “good and evil,” “right and wrong,” and “moral and immoral” with dynamism and verve.[10] And Sam Harris claims that the golden rule is a “wonderful moral precept.”[11] But what moral theory do they advance to justify these beliefs and assertions?
Atheistic moral theories are relatively few. An atheist could, for example, affirm cultural or individual moral relativism.[12] But the New Atheists deny this. In a recent debate with Rick Warren—pastor of Saddleback Church—for example, Sam Harris made the following point about moral relativism:
I’m not at all a moral relativist. I think it’s quite common among religious people to believe that atheism entails moral relativism. I think there is an absolute right and wrong. I think honor killing, for example, is unambiguously wrong—you can use the word evil. A society that kills women and girls for sexual indiscretion, even the indiscretion of being raped, is a society that has killed compassion, that has failed to teach men to value women and has eradicated empathy. Empathy and compassion are our most basic moral impulses, and we can even teach the golden rule without lying to ourselves or our children about the origin of certain books or the virgin birth of certain people.[13]
Harris recognizes the dangers of moral relativism and argues against it in his book The End of Faith. He asserts that “questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures.”[14] So at first glance it appears that he is espousing a form of utilitarianism—the moral theory that right action is one that maximizes utility, such as pleasure or happiness. But no, he says, he is not doing so, because he doesn’t think categories like that are useful.[15] So he doesn’t want to be a moral relativist; he wants to equate right and wrong with happiness and suffering. But he doesn’t want to be labeled a utilitarian either. So what is his moral theory? He doesn’t tell us.
Daniel Dennett wants to avoid what he calls “imperialist universalism”—the idea that there are universal concrete standards of justice and human rights that apply to all societies. But he also affirms moral realism and wants to avoid moral relativism. A scientific stance toward morality should be taken, he argues, but within that stance we must presuppose the “transcendent values of truth and justice.” It’s hard to understand the existence of a transcendent anything, given an atheistic view of the world—why presuppose the transcendent values of truth and justice? His response is that we should “accept that these [transcendent] values are inescapably presupposed by human projects that we all participate in, simply by being alive: staying alive, and staying secure.”[16] Even aliens (if they exist) could agree with this point, he suggests, and nothing more “parochial” (read “narrow minded and unreasonable, such as belief in God) needs to be considered in presupposing these values.
Certainly this bald proclamation needs some justifying. Did the big bang somehow spew forth moral platitudes like “Be compassionate to others,” “Care for those in need” and “Love your enemies”? If not, where did they come from? What makes them something more than mere subjective opinions?
An atheist could put forth a consequentialist or perhaps even a deontological moral theory.[17] But the New Atheists don’t take these options either. So what do they do? In terms of a moral theory, nothing. To his credit, Dawkins attempts to tackle this issue by rooting moral action in biological evolution. In the preface to his Selfish Gene he argues that “we are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”[18] On his view of things, our moral aspirations and beliefs are predetermined posits of our genetic machinery, selfishly programmed to advance the gene pool. In his later work The God Delusion, he clarifies his position:
On the face of it, the Darwinian idea that evolution is driven by natural selection seems ill-suited to explain such goodness as we possess, or our feelings of morality, decency, empathy, and pity. Natural selection can easily explain hunger, fear, and sexual lust, all of which straightforwardly contribute to our survival or the preservation of our genes. But what about the wrenching compassion we feel when we see an orphaned child weeping, an old widow in despair from loneliness, or an animal whimpering in pain? What gives us the powerful urge to send an anonymous gift of money or clothes to tsunami victims on the other side of the world whom we shall never meet, and who are highly unlikely to return the favor? Where does the Good Samaritan in us come from? Isn’t goodness incompatible with the theory of the “selfish gene”? No. This is a common misunderstanding of the theory—a distressing (and, with hindsight, foreseeable) misunderstanding. It is necessary to put the stress on the right word. The selfish gene is the correct emphasis, for it makes the contrast with the selfish organism, say, or the selfish species. Let me explain.
The logic of Darwinism concludes that the unit in the hierarchy of life which survives and passes through the filter of natural selection will tend to be selfish. The units that survive in the world will be the ones that succeeded in surviving at the expense of their rivals at their own level in the hierarchy. That, precisely, is what selfish means in this context.[19]
Dawkins agrees that “the most obvious way in which genes ensure their own ‘selfish’ survival relative to other genes is by programming individual organisms to be selfish.” However, he argues, sometimes selfish genes “ensure their own selfish survival by influencing organisms to behave altruistically” or “morally.” This happens especially with an organism’s kin—brothers, sisters and children: “A gene that programs individual organisms to favour their genetic kin is statistically likely to benefit copies of itself.”[20]
But it also happens through another means, he argues: “reciprocal altruism.” This is the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” idea, and it takes place not just with one’s kin but also between various members of the species and even among members of different species. Also referred to as “symbiosis,” this kind of relationship is one in which “both sides benefit from the transaction.”[21]
To these “twin pillars” Dawkins adds two further elements which rest atop them: “reputation for generosity” (i.e., one acts altruistically so others will form the belief that you are generous) and “buying authentic advertising” (one acts altruistically or morally in order to prove that he has more than another—that he is dominant and superior—and thus can afford to be altruistic and moral).
So we have four components of an attempt to provide justification for acting morally:[22]
In sum, Dawkins seems to be saying that our genes are preprogrammed to selfishly replicate themselves. Even so, individuals don’t always act selfishly because our genes—working at the level of the organism—sometimes act in altruistic and moral ways, as this offers better gene propagation.
Now an obvious and glaring problem here is that this has very little to do with what we generally understand to be morality—with real right and wrong, good and evil. On Dawkins’s schema, one is kind to his neighbor because he’s been preprogrammed by his genes to do so (at least some individuals have been so preprogrammed; others perhaps not), and he’s been so programmed because acting this way confers evolutionary advantage. It’s not that it is a universally binding moral value to be kind. We simply call it “morally good” because our genes have, through eons of evolutionary struggle, gotten us to believe that it is so. Furthermore, on this account there is nothing really or objectively wrong with an individual being selfish at the level of the organism, for example, or with an individual harming another for her own gain, or even with someone raping others for his own pleasure. It’s just that acting in these ways does not generally confer an overall evolutionary advantage on an organism’s genes and so has become socially prohibited over time.
But do Dawkins and Harris and the other New Atheists really believe that rape, murder and the like are not truly and universally evil? Are good and evil just illusions conjured up by our genes to get us to behave in certain ways? At times it seems that Dawkins and the others do not want this conclusion, but yet they don’t want an absolutist morality either.[23] So what do they want? It’s not clear. Dawkins realizes that he has not provided a moral theory with his account and hints that there are other types of moral theory besides relativism and absolutism that one could affirm. But he holds back from embracing any of them and just leaves the reader hanging.
But he can’t have his cake and eat it too. If good and evil are objectively real, they need an objective foundation. No atheist has provided one, and it’s doubtful that one will be forthcoming. We can put the problem concisely:
(1) If moral notions such as good and evil exist objectively, then there must be an objective foundation for their existence.
(2) Atheism offers no objective basis for the existence of moral notions such as good and evil.
(3) Therefore, for the atheist, moral notions such as good and evil must not objectively exist.
Morality as Illusion
Evolutionary ethicist and atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse (an atheist but not a New Atheist), along with his colleague Edward Wilson, are much more honest and consistent in recognizing that morality cannot be grounded in terms of naturalistic, biological evolution. They put it this way:
Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will—or in the metaphorical roots of evolution or any other part of the framework of the Universe. In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. Ethics is produced by evolution but is not justified by it because, like Macbeth’s dagger, it serves a powerful purpose without existing in substance. . . . Unlike Macbeth’s dagger, ethics is a shared illusion of the human race.[24]
So morality is something most of us believe in, but it doesn’t exist in reality. This is really where the New Atheists’ moral position ends up, whether they realize it or not.[25] He also refers to such moral values as kindness, altruism, generosity, empathy and pity as evolutionary “mistakes” or “misfiring.”
What natural selection favors is rules of thumb, which work in practice to promote the genes that built them. Rules of thumb, by their nature, sometimes misfire. In a bird’s brain, the rule “Look after small squawking things in your nest, and drop food into their red gapes” typically has the effect of preserving the genes that built the rule, because the squawking, gaping objects in an adult bird’s nest are normally its own offspring. The rule misfires if another baby bird somehow gets into the nest, a circumstance that is positively engineered by cuckoos. Could it be that our Good Samaritan urges are misfiring, analogous to the misfiring of a reed warbler’s parental instincts when it works itself to the bone for a young cuckoo? An even closer analogy is the human urge to adopt a child.[26]
Do we really believe that the moral urge to adopt a child is an evolutionary misfiring? I have several friends who have adopted children, and I don’t suspect they would agree at all with Dawkins’s explanation for why they did so. It was their kindness, love and moral concern for disenfranchised children that motivated them.
Knowing that his misfiring theory is more than most readers could swallow, Dawkins adds that even though moral notions are mistakes or misfirings, they are “precious mistakes”; they are misfirings of a “good” sort. But what in the world does that mean? Are they good in a moral sense? To claim this would be inconsistent, for it would be using the term good when the claim is now that there is no good, no evil. The attempt to offer a view of morality in which good and evil are not ultimately illusory on the one hand, and yet are not grounded in a transcendent reality on the other hand, is perhaps the most confused characteristic of the writings of Dawkins and the New Atheists.
In order to have a consistent and reasonable objective moral stance—a moral view in which you can substantiate a claim that this is right and that is wrong, this is good and that is evil—you need to have an objective moral basis. As C. S. Lewis argued so well, moral laws require a moral lawgiver,[27] and I don’t see how one can have an objective lawgiver with anything other than a transcendent God. Surely from the physical perturbations of the big bang, moral values didn’t spew forth. At most the illusion of moral values was eventually spawned. Certainly objective moral values didn’t simply pop into existence ex nihilo (out of nothing) one lucky day in the ancient past. And indeed nothing in biological evolution, most especially the alleged selfish-gene phenomenon, is capable of providing the foundation necessary to ground unconditionally binding moral values.
Some years ago actress Katherine Hepburn made the following statement: “I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for each other.”[28] I’m glad she knew these things, but I wonder by what basis she could affirm her moral beliefs? No doubt atheists like her or Dawkins can believe such things. They can win Emmys and write first-rate books on the importance of acting morally, of treating people with compassion, dignity and respect. They can even spend their lives fighting evil and injustice. But what they cannot do, from within their atheistic worldview, is provide a reasonable justification for the existence of nonsubjective, universally binding moral values such as compassion, dignity and respect or moral vices such as evil and injustice. For that task, they would need to include God in their inventory of what exists.[29]
For Further Reading
Adams, Robert M. Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Copan, Paul. “The Moral Argument.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edited by Chad Meister and Paul Copan, pp. 362-72. London: Routledge, 2007.
Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan, 1953.
McGrath, Alister. Suffering and God. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995.
Meister, Chad. Evil: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum, forthcoming.
Rist, John. Real Ethics: Rethinking the Foundations of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.