Evil/Religion and Science

The problem of Evil

• What is it?
• Augustine in his Confessions defined the problem of evil:
• 'Either God cannot abolish evil, or he will not; if he cannot then he is not all powerful; if he will not then he is not all good.'
• The assumption expressed here is that a good God would eliminate evil as far as it is possible. If he is omnipotent then all evil should be eliminated, but evil exists so why does God allow it?
• This inconsistent triad presents Christians with a problem. Should they drop one of God's characteristics so that his existence is compatible with evil?
• David Hume in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion argues that either:
• God is not omnipotent
• or God is not omnibolevolent
• or evil does not exist
• Evil does not exist and as the idea of God must include omnipotence and omnibenevolence, then God cannot exist.
• In response to this problem various philosophers have presented theodicies - theories which try to explain the problem of evil while maintaining God's omnipotence and omnibenevolence.

Types of Evil

• Natural evil - suffering caused by natural disasters, such as tsunamis killing people and animals destroying homes.
• Moral evil - suffering caused by humans, such as the holocaust.

The Augustinian Theodicy

• St Augustine's answer to the problem of evil is the traditionally accepted one. Augustine based his theory on two key passages in the Bible: Genesis 3 (the fall) and Romans 5:12 - 20.
• Augustine believed that a good God created the world and at the time of creation the world was good. Evil, according to Augustine, is a 'privation of good', not all entity itself - just as blindness is a privation of sight.
• If the world was good when God created t, then where did evil come from? According to Augustine, evil was a result of angels who turned away from God, misused their free will and tempted Adam and Eve - this is the origin of moral evil. Since all humans are 'seminally present in the loins of Adam', we are all born with original sin. Augustin described natural evil as the punishment for sin or the 'penal consequences of sin'.
• Augustine's theodicy is often called soul-deciding theodicy as the choice is ours whether we obey God or not. Christian belief says that at the end of time, there will be a Judgement day, when the good will goto heaven and the bad will go to hell. Because evil is punished. Augustine argued that God's world can still be seen as perfect in the end.

Evaluating Augustine's Theodicy

• Schleiermacher in The Christian Faith said that Augustines Theodicy was flawed. He said it was a logical contradiction so say that a perfectly created world had gone wrong, since this would mean that evil had created itself 'ex nihilo', which is impossible. Either the world was created imperfect or God allowed it o go wrong.
• If the world was perfect and there was no knowledge of good and evil, how could there be freedom to obey or disobey God, since good and evil are unknown? The fact that Adam and Eve and the angels disobeyed God means that there was already knowledge of good and evil. Is Augustine's interpretation of the tree of knowledge flawed?
• Augustine's idea that the world was made perfect and was then damaged by humans is contradictory to the theory of evolution, which asserts that the universe has been continually developing from a state of chaos.
• The existence of hell as a place f eternal torment challenges the notion of an all-loving God. If hell was part of God's design for the universe and he knew people would make the world go wrong, then why did he still allow it to happen? This implies a malicious God not an omnibenevolent one.
• The idea that evil comes from a misuse of free will is defended by Richard Swinburne, who argues that the imagery of the fall is still valid even if the story is taken as myth.

The Irenaean Theodicy

• Irenaeus believed that there were two stages to creation. First, man ws created as an immature being that had yet to grow and develop. Then there was a period of change during which man would respond to situations in life and eventually become a child of God. This soften called a soul-making theodicy.
• Irenaeus argued that we were created imperfect so that we could freely choose to become good and turn to God. Moral evil was the result of our having the freedom to grow and develop into a child of God. Evil is necessary to aid such development, for example, a natural evil, such as famine, helps us develop qualities, such as compassion. Irenaeus saw evil as a necessary part of life and something that will eventually make us into better people.
• Irenaeus saw salvation as open to all, but he states clearly that those who reject God will be punished.

John Hick's version: The Irenaean Theodicy

• John Hick suggested that humans are created in the image of God but as they are spiritually immature they need to grow into the likeness of God, which then enables them to have a relationship with God.
• He also suggested that we are made at a distance from God - a distance of knowledge - the epistemic distance. Moral evil was the result of our having freedom to grow and develop into a child of God.
• In the Irenaean Theodicy people only become made in the image of God after death, and so Hick suggests that, at death, some of us will proceed into heaven. Hick's theodicy has an eschatological aspect: those who have not completed their development will continue their soul-making journey after death but may then enter the kingdom of heaven. Hick then supports universal salvation - he does not believe in hell.

Evaluating Irenaeus' Theodicy

• Hick's version of Irenaeus' argument says that everyone goes to heaven. This seems unjust as immorality is not punished. It is inconsistent with orthodox Christianity as it denies the Fall, and Jesus' role is reduced to a moral example.
• The quantity and extremely of evil seems unacceptable in soul-making. Is evil, such as the holocaust, necessary?
• Allowing evil to continue can never be an expression of love according to DZ Philips.
• Heaven could be open to everyone because if life just ended, God's purpose would never be fulfilled.
• Heaven could justify the enormous amount of suffering on earth.

Religion and Science

• The Issues
• Is it possible to accept the findings of modern science and be religious?
• Do the findings of scientists undermine the case for belief in God?

Creationism Vs Big Bang

• Most people today accept the big bang theory and consider that science is about facts and religion is based on old stories that are no longer relevant. This has led people to assume that science is right and religion is wrong, so as a reaction many Christians , especially in the USA, reject evolution and modern ideas about cosmology. This debate is not necessarily typical as many believers can accept modern cosmology and evolution.
• The Big Bang theory is generally accepted as an explanation for the origins and development of the universe is 12-15 billion years old. All matter in the universe comes from the initial expansion of space from a single point.
• For both scientists and believers the key question is why the universe exists at all - the Big Bang can explain how the universe developed but it cannot answer this question. It is possible that scientists might eventually find an answer to this question, or maybe God is the simplest explanation of the cause of the universe that is consistent with the scientific evidence. This God is not necessarily the God of faith, but more something akin to Aristotle's Prime Mover.
• Maybe the universe simply exists by chance - it was just a random development of the Big Bang, Atheists, like Richard Dawkins, argue that everything can be explained by science and that the idea of God simply fills the gaps in our knowledge and is a lazy response to the problem.
• Creationists believe all life was created by the actions of God, everything in the universe has God as its ultimate cause and without the actions of God nothing could have come into being. Most creationists believe the Bible to be the literal word of God.

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• Approaches of Creationism:
• Some creationists say God created everything in one creative event.
• Some creationists don't limit creation to one event.
• All the forms of life existing today were created by the actions of God.
• The organisms created by God can't produce new forms of organism - only God can do this.
• The most common theory follows the accounts in the book of Genesis, but most religions have their own creation story.
• Modern creationism uses scientific evidence to support the biblical account.
• Most scientists say the creationism theory is false and unscientific.
• The main forms of creationism are:
• Young earth creationism - the book of genesis is literally true.
• Old earth creationism - the earth is about 4 million yearsold, God played an active role in creation.
• Gap creationism - there were two creations, on before A&E and one later creating A&E.
• Day-age creationism - this says that the biblical six days were not 24 hours each but millions of years.
• Progressive creationism - this says God created different species as shown by fossil record.

Intelligent Design & Irreducible Complexity

• The intelligent design theory claims that some sort of supernatural designer was involved in the creation of life on Earth. This theory differs from creationism because to divorces creationist idea from the bible.
• The argument in favour of intelligent design has two parts:
• Evolutionary theory does not fully explain the origin and development of life on earth.
• Life on earth - and more generally the universe - shows so much order, purpose and design that there must have been a designer.
• The important part of the intelligent design theory is 'design', and the idea that the universe and life must somehow be designed is a very old one, going right back to Aristotle.
• Thomas Aquinas used the argument to try to prove the existence of God:
• Wherever complex design exists, there must have been a designer.
• Nature is complex.
• Therefore nature must have had an intelligent designer.
• Most intelligent design arguments avoid any reference to scripture and try to eliminate anything that might look as if the argument was derived from religious belief.

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• The idea of irreducible complexity cam from the work of the biochemist Michael Behe and challenges the biological view of evolution. Irreducible complexity argues that some biological systems are so complex, and so dependent upon multiple complex parts, that they could not have evolved by chance. He uses an example the E coli bacteria's flagellar system, which the E coli bacteria use to move around and which has 40 individual parts, most of which are unique. Behe says that unless all parts of such a complex system all evolved at the same time, the system would be useless, so such a complex system needs its own evolutionary process.
• While irreducible complexity does not explicitly prove an intelligent designer, and does not conclusively disprove evolution, it does point to something outside of random processes in the origin and development of life.

Darwinism and other evolutionary theories

• Charles Darwin wrote On The Origin Of Species in 1859, after his observations made his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle. In it, he set out his theory of evolution:
• Variation
• Competition
• Offspring
• Genetics
• Natural Selection
• Darwin imagined it might be possible that all life is descended from an original species from ancient times. DNA evidence supports this idea.
• Richard Dawkins is one of the most famous critics of religion, but he has also made important contributions to evolutionary biology and our understanding of genetics. He is a materialist who believes that humans are bytes of digital information. He believes there is no should or consciousness as we are the sum total of our genes and merely carriers of information and DNA.
• For Dawkins, the only conceivable theory is that of evolution. We are as we are because of our genetic make-up, and all that maters is the survival of DNA, the function of life.

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• Dawkins looks at the idea of consciousness, and says we have this feeling of individualist because our genes are working together. We cannot see ourselves as a colony but as a while. This working together of our genes is based on the desire for survival of those genes.
• The development of consciousness:
• If an act has bad results the animal will not repeat it.
• If an act has good results the animal will repeat it.
• Ultimately the colony of genes needs a central control on order for it to function, so the colony develops the brain.
• Animals evolve so that behaviour is no longer a trial and error - they develop the capacity to predict the results of certain actions. This enables them to choose how to behave.
• Dawkins claims that now that the consciousness has evolved, the genes' need for replication is no longer the driving force behind contemporary evolution. There is a new replicator, a meme which transmits culture from generation to generation. So people are now hosts for replicating memes.

Religious responses to Science

• Some prominent Christian thinkers have accepted the idea of evolution. Among these are Frederick Temple, ABoC, who said that Genesis is a religious text teaching a religious message, not a scientific document. He added that there is nothing in the teaching of evolution that conflicts with humans being in the image of God.
• Teilhard de Chardin said that evolution was definitely willed process leading from insnimste matter to life, to man and eventually to Jesus. He saw evolutions biological, human, moral and spiritual and not just about science.
• More recently John Polkinghorne said that theology has to respond to science, but that science itself is not as clear as it once was. Modern physics is only just beginning to understand the complexity of matter and so physics and theology are trying to answer the same questions, such as: the 'cause' of the big bang and why there are orderly scientific laws and not chaos.
• Science and theology can work together - as both are engaged in rational inquiry into whatever we experience and both are concerned to understand life.