Evolution, the problem of evil, and a challenge to the idea of the good.

Evolution, the problem of evil, and a challenge to the idea of good.

The argument from evil stands out as the strongest case against belief in God. If an all good and all powerful Creator produced a world, the argument goes, that world would reflect the Creator’s own goodness. But a close look at reality presents something quite different from what we would expect. Life on earth is violent, terrifying and excruciatingly painful for its inhabitants. Except for those at the top of the food chain, animals must seek food for themselves and their young under the constant threat of being eaten by a predator. Their lives are likely to end with a few minutes of terror as they try to escape and then the horror and physical pain of having the claws and teeth of death tear into their flesh.

            Psychologist Ernest Becker writing about how our fear of death, which we try to suppress, describes an absurd nature in which the horror of human death constitutes a small but typical part:

What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to tear others apart with teeth of all types---biting, grinding flesh…bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating the essence into one’s own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue?

Becker argues that if we can remove all of the illusions that constitute our culture and look at life as it is, we realize that nature mocks the poet. In the context of these posts, we might conclude that nature mocks the idea of the good.

Why did the Creator not make us all vegetarians like the animals in the “Peaceable Kingdom?” Since plants lack the awareness and the nervous system to feel pain, eating them would not involve inflicting cruelty. Or better, yet, why not endow all creatures with the power of photosynthesis and skip eating all together?  But since eating constitutes such a pleasure, why did the Creator not grow lobster tails on trees so that we could enjoy them without throwing a live lobster into boiling water? And why can we not enjoy all sorts of steaks and roasts without the pain and horror of the slaughterhouse? Scientists today are working on growing meat from stem cells. Why didn’t an omniscient Creator think of that? The contrast between reality and our fantasy of what a benign all-mighty being would have created constitutes for many an airtight argument against belief in God.  Atheists like Dawkins do not posit an evil god, but simply an absence of any creator or source of good and evil. The universe including the process of evolution is, in their view, unconscious and pitiless. Atheists have a strong case to show that the world including living things does not flow from an intelligent designer. What happens to the idea of the good?

The self-sufficiency of nature and the case for atheism

The self-sufficiency of nature and the case for atheism

The first argument, mentioned in the previous post, that evolution renders the need for a Creator superfluous, rests on the premise that, in the vastness of time and space, anything that could happen will happen somewhere at some time. Advocates of this idea depict biological evolution on earth as just one small instance of physical evolution by which the universe takes on the structure of elements and molecules following patterns that we call laws.  When writers such as Daniel Dennett speak of “vastness”, they do not limit themselves to the 13.7 billion years or so that mark the progress of our universe since the big bang. Rather they posit a vast if not infinite number of alternate universes that may have no spatial temporal or gravitational relationship with our universe. Every universe that could exist probably does exist and we are part of one that happens to have a structure that supports life and consciousness.

            Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow offer an atheist explanation of reality in their 2010 book, The Grand Design. The title is ironic, I assume deliberately so, because theists have traditionally argued that design implies an Intelligent Designer. But Hawking and Mlodinow posit a design without the need for a designer. They contend that the laws of physics can create new universes out of nothing. As Hawking and Mlodinow describe the universe producing laws:

Any set of laws that describes a continuous world such as ours will have a concept of energy, which is a constant quantity, meaning it does not change in time…One requirement any law of nature must satisfy is that it dictates that the energy of an isolated body surrounded by empty space is positive, which means that one has to do work to assemble the body.

It is not clear whether these laws and concepts, which dictate what energy must do, are aspects of reality or “merely” the brain products of very intelligent physicists, at this stage of human evolution. In the first chapter of The Grand Design, the authors stipulate that they are employing a “model dependent realism,” which means that our brains must employ a model to interpret the sensory data received by our senses from whatever is real. So there will always be a gap between what even our best physicists know and what really exists.

For Hawking and Mlodinow, and perhaps for all atheistic scientists, the laws constitute an uncaused cause, and given the vastness of time and space, there is no limit to the number of universes that exist, have existed, or will exist. In the view of self-creating universes, each universe may have its own local laws. We are lucky to live in a universe whose laws allow for planets like earth to exist and for life and a degree of intelligence to evolve. But the process that provides for a countless number of universes requires a basic law of energy and gravity that creates from nothing. The nothingness consists of negative energy. Neither atheists nor theists can imagine or think of nothing, so we all posit a kind of reality that enables something to come from “nothing.” For theists, the reality is a conscious Creator, for atheists the “creative” reality consists of unconscious laws. (No one can think of nothingness, because if there were nothing, there would be no thinking. We may not be able to go as far as Descartes and posit a thinking substance, but we could not deny that there is thinking.)

Not only do materialists believe that, in a universe such as ours, 13.7 billion years allows for random events to produce life and consciousness, but also that the enormity of time supports the belief that the evolutionary process occurs randomly. The slowness of the process is compatible with randomness, but not with a purposeful Creator. Atheists see the ten billion years from the big bang to the beginning of life on earth, and the 3.5 billion years from the beginning of life to the emergence of human scientists, as a prodigal waste of time. The god in whom atheists do not believe would have been much quicker and more efficient. 

The Pitilessness of Nature and the Problem of Good

The Pitilessness of Nature and the Problem of Good

Facing the facts of Evolution

            Any view of reality worthy of belief takes account of the facts that confront human beings in every aspect of our individual and communal lives, aspects such as those studied by natural science, social science, and history. These disciplines do not tell us where we should go from here, or how to get there, but they form the basis for understanding how we arrived at our present state of reality. The present discussion will focus on the facts revealed by science. Since 1859, when Darwin published his Origin of Species, the notion of evolution has impacted not only biology, but also philosophy, theology, politics, and economics. Nothing in our intellectual life has been the same.

            “Our materialistic age” in the title of this series of posts flows from the prevailing interpretation of Darwin. In this interpretation, there is no longer a need to deal with the problem of evil, a problem that vexed those who believed in a good and almighty Creator. Now, the things that we call evil are seen as simply things that we do not like, as an animal in the jungle does not like being eaten up by a predator. But the plight of the prey and our plight constitute the same process of evolution, which is blind and indifferent to the fate of all of us beasts. The problem that we must encounter is “the problem of good,” beginning with whether there is such a thing as good, beyond the enjoyment that an animal or human predator takes in eating its meal, finding its mate, or other such pleasures. This investigation must be undertaken in the context of Darwinian evolution.

Is anything really good?        

The question that defines these posts is whether the term “good” refers to an objective reality rather than to merely a subjective point of view as when a big fish eats a little fish – The big fish likes it, the little fish doesn’t. Theologians use the term theodicy, which literally means the justification of God, to describe the problem of believing in a good God in an evil universe. Theos means God, dike means justice. Perhaps we can coin the term agathodicy from agathon meaning good, to describe the problem of maintaining the reality of good in a Darwinian world. The two questions, of God and of good, are closely linked since both theists and atheists, who disagree on the reality of God, generally agree that if God is real, He She, or It is the source of goodness. If God is real how do we explain evil? If God is not real, how do we explain good?

            This investigation proceeds with an examination of whether a Darwinian understanding of biological evolution and its application to the genesis of the cosmos, forces an atheist conclusion. Some religious believers agree with the hypothetical connection, “If Darwin is right then God does not exist,” and conclude that Darwin therefore must be wrong. Materialists, of course, take the opposite position – “Darwin is right, therefore God does not exist.” But I will take up the premise that Darwin is in principle correct, and ask whether atheism necessarily follows.

The atheist argument has three main premises: First, evolution stands as a sufficient explanation of the present world, and so any appeal to a Creator is superfluous. Second, the randomness, waste, and slow pace of evolution exclude the presence of a purpose that would be the signature of a Creator. Third, and most powerful, the violence, pain and suffering of evolving life are incompatible with belief in a decent, much less an all good, Creator. 

Purpose in Evolution: All or Nothing?

Purpose in Evolution: All or Nothing?

            The argument today, at least in the popular culture, seems to favor a take-it-or leave-it choice that either the universe proceeds from an Intelligent Designer or results from blind chance. The argument for the blind chance position holds that the process of evolution bears no resemblance to what would be the work of an Intelligent Designer. This argument takes the form of the classical atheist argument based on the problem of evil. If there were a good and almighty and all wise God as Creator, the universe would be a very nice place; but the universe is not a very nice place. The second premise bears a lot of weight. The world does not look like the product of a good Creator. While things are messy and violent on earth, the ancients, even up to the time of Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century thought that at least the heavens reflected a rational order. We know now that, in the heavens, whole galaxies are colliding into each other and on earth the development of life is “red in tooth and claw.”

            One response to the denial of a clean product from a good Creator with a clear purpose is to reject the notion of good, creation, and purpose, and posit a world that emerges by blind chance. Many if not most of the materialists hold this position as their main premise. They appeal to the notion that in the vastness of time and space an infinite number of universes evolve and ours happens to have beings with life, consciousness, and a degree of intelligence. This idea seems to have worked its way into the popular culture where characters on TV and in movies casually mention alternative universes.

            Does logic force us to accept the notion that only blind chance could have produced our world? I intend to offer an interpretation that diverges radically from the materialist views that effectively deny the significance of consciousness. This series of posts concludes with a sketch of the position that will be elaborated and applied in the remaining posts.  Many instructional books on learning the art of drawing advise the budding artist to begin with a sketch to set the boundaries and proportions of the subject. Afterward, the details, accents, and shading can be applied to flesh out the picture. (Spoiler alert) I will follow this pattern by giving a sketch of my proposal. Any attempt to explain reality, whether attempted by a philosopher, a theologian, or a physicist, must involve at least a little hubris. Honesty requires Platonic humility, which means that we call our ideas “a likely story,” or in the words of Charles Sanders Peirce, “A guess at the riddle.”

            As a minimum requirement, a worldview must be possible, meaning that it exhibits both logical consistency and compatibility with known facts. The writer must then show that the view presented is probably true and at least as feasible, or more so, than other alternatives.

            We begin with the recognition of brute facts, which constitute chaos and apparently no sign of any kind of consciousness, order, or benevolence. This statement applies to the period following the “big bang,” to the development of stars and planet, and to the evolution of life on earth from the first protozoa to the “origin of species,” and even to the history of the human race. The fundamental particles seem to be inert unconscious, impenetrable, and determined by the conflicting blind forces of both necessity and chance. They do not display completely random behavior, but follow a regularity that scientists discern as laws of physics. Yet, their behavior also displays some randomness and uncertainty. Moving from fundamental particles to biology, the forces of chance and necessity are still at work. The whole premise of evolution rests on the notion that random mutations occur but then become genetically fixed. This description does not go beyond the reality of brute facts although the elements become entangled in patterns that give rise to consciousness and the ability to find patterns and study them scientifically.  

            But we human beings, at this stage of our evolution have the ability to discern something different from brute facts. We experience beauty: in each other, in nature, in music and art, in our own creative ideas, and in scientific theories. We see enough order and what we call by the name of goodness to make many believe that a Creator-God is at work. This form of consciousness constitutes my title phrase, “the problem of good.” Just as atheists deem the “problem of evil” as proof of God’s non-existence, those who believe in a spiritual reality may see “the problem of good” as a challenge to materialism.

Of course, the materialists will pass all of this off as illusion, or at best, a quirk of a particular set of random mutations in our brain. The dogma of materialism holds that whatever we cannot understand at this stage of our evolution, meaning anything that does not fit the method and content of science, does not exist. With a relatively high level of intelligence, scientists can describe objectively the movement of elementary particles and energy. The assumption of popular materialism holds that the consciousness by which we know physical nature must be a product of nature as we know it.

In posing the problem of consciousness and matter, the danger of a simplistic all-or-nothing dualism looms. A person might think that we must choose between materialism and a kind of creationism. But the complexity and depth of reality should cause us to reject both religious and scientific fundamentalism. A person can reject a literal interpretation of the Bible, in fact reject the whole Bible, without being a materialist. Likewise a person can reject materialism without being biblical fundamentalist.

An alternative vision sees the universe as a process of moving from absolute chaos to a cosmos that expresses: order, beauty, harmony, consciousness, freedom, joy, and, love. The materialists might consistently maintain that these qualities are subjective and fleeting. But the materialist view is not the only rational alternative. We can rationally maintain that these qualities are prior to our known world and that they are powerful, creative, and productive. Whatever is the source of these qualities---call it God or don’t---we may rationally maintain that evolution consists of these powers overcoming the chaos, necessity, and inertness of the elemental brute facts. To the extent that this vision is true, the qualities such as consciousness, freedom, love, and creativity, which we experience to a degree in our own lives, have their seeds in the very formation of the universe.          

            Can we posit a chaos of blind, inert, purposeless, and brutal realities tending toward further chaos and division, and also a Creator Spirit working in the whole development of the universe including human evolution on earth to bring about purpose, intelligence, freedom and cooperation? To affirm both does not mean a dualism of two layers, one material and the other spiritual. Rather the world itself reflects the interaction of the two opposing forces. In the posts to follow, I will elaborate on this interpretation and argue that it stands out as the most rational view that we can hold