A Critique of the Argument from Evil
By: Benjamin Cain
Tags: Philosophy, Atheism, Theology, Religion, God

The Hollowness of the Pragmatic Argument from Evil

How does this analysis pertain to the theistic problem of evil? We should observe, first, that the existential possibility of suffering just the right amount is in danger of presupposing atheism, in which case the analysis would be useless as an argument for atheism. Thus, for argumentative purposes, the atheist would want to say that the harsh truths grasped by those who suffer nobly for philosophy don’t necessarily include atheism, at least not at the outset.

What the existential perspective does include, though, is an appreciation of God’s apparent hiddenness. This perspective takes for granted the alienation of our species, due to our scientific knowledge of where we stand in the universe. We’re physical beings with perhaps too much consciousness, reason, and imagination for our good. We understand, for example, that we inevitably die because our bodies give out from under us. And we understand that the natural order can be explained without reference to a deity.

Of course, that perspective all by itself points towards atheism, but it needn’t beg the question. Even religious people can agree that God transcends the universe, which implies that God is in some sense absent and that atheism is, therefore, compatible with how things seem from our vantage point, even if a transcendent deity turns out to exist.

But what becomes of the problem evil if we should stipulate that some suffering is worthwhile? I think the problem should be reformulated.

The difficulty is that when the atheist says God wouldn’t allow for this or that instance of suffering, whether it be for the effects of some disease or for the extinction of the dinosaurs or even for the results of human free will, the atheist divorces herself from the existential perspective and presupposes social conventions that likely depend, in turn, on a pragmatic form of theism.

I’ll explain what I mean. Suppose an atheist presents the following argument from evil: “The monotheist’s God wouldn’t create species by natural selection, since doing so would entail an abundance of suffering which would appall any respectable creator. For example, this mode of creation means that living things have to feed off of each other to survive, which is abhorrent.”

This argument expresses the atheist’s disgust with the rampant savagery in nature. And of course, while we presume to be above the fray, there’s likely been no more deadly animal species than ours. Yet that disgust presumes a contrast with a social standard of civility. The point is that whereas human civilization is relatively moral in that we don’t tolerate wild and lawless forms of murder, the rest of the world, at least, seems amoral, which disgusts us (and which therefore motivated us to build a better, artificial world). We conclude, then, that nature ought to disgust also a Maker that’s at all like us.

But that appeal to the contrast between human and animal standards threatens to make this argument incoherent because the human standards are social, and societies tend to presuppose theism or some idols that substitute for old-fashioned gods. If the laws that validate the atheist’s disgust towards barbaric suffering are useful in propping up society as an alternative to the wretchedness of life in the wild, on what grounds can the atheist reject theism as a comparable prop?

In short, this kind of atheistic argument ends up being merely pragmatic. The atheist is revolted by the kinds of suffering that human societies are intended to minimize or eliminate. Society, therefore, presupposes laws that encode a sense of morality. But society also presupposes religious myths to encourage the population to be proud of its social practices.

Thus, the proponent of the standard argument from evil ends up having to concede the utility of at least the social fiction of God’s existence. But that’s tantamount to what the exoteric, literalistic (unphilosophical) theist is after, since the vaunted faith in God is just the suspension of disbelief in certain myths or transparent fictions.