What freedom? What responsibility? Apart from modern, Western, luxury illusions?
Freedom to do good or evil and responsibility for one’s actions are what is needed because this is a testing ground. You choose, by what you do, either eternal life in Heaven or eternal oblivion in Hell.
We need to go beyond the monism of the East and the dualism of the West.
Pain and suffering which comes in the form of diseases (cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular “cerebrovascular accidents”, mental disorders to name the main ones) are not natural and indeed is the result of evil because there is related, inhumane people and underhanded foul game play behind disease. If we take good note of the science we can see the evidence is there.
All that is needed is to recognize that there is “a ghost in the machine”. There is a conscious being in the material embodiment/ the body. Then the lot falls into place.
I don’t see how the “problem” of suffering and death works either for or against the existence of God or a good creation. If there is no God, then suffering and death just is. If there is a God, then the universe as we see it may simply be the only way to achieve what he desires to have (and we can’t justifiably conclude that it “isn’t worth it” because we can’t see it). To say “Well, God could have done it some other way” is a fallacy – how could you possibly know? To say “Well, that’s not how I would have done it if I’d been God” is simply stupid – what on earth could you possibly know about creating a universe? How exactly would you go about building a material universe peopled with conscious beings, but without all the stuff you don’t like?
So is there even really a “problem of suffering”? That suffering exists can’t be a problem for atheists. And it ought not be a problem for Christians, if they trust in a good God.
I think what’s more interesting is that, despite the above statement, both sides keenly, deeply, intuitively feel that suffering should be a problem. But… why should that be? I think this might be called “The Problem of the Problem of Suffering”…
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I’ve mentioned earlier that I’ll try re posting this question because it’s become obvious I didn’t communicate well. The question is about the the volatility of evolutionary creationism not all the other side topics. My comments were not meant to become a debate about any issue but rather a discussion. I’ll re post hopefully with clear wording.
But I do want to include a perspective regarding those who have difficulty with suffering. For one we do not know their backgrounds and what they may have had to endure themselves or witness first hand. I find many statements about suffering easily said theoretically. Much different when someone has endured and witnessed an extremely close relationship experience extreme suffering for an extended period. Possibly multiple times. Let’s keep in mind about 1/3 of the Psalms are considered laments. As Tim Keller has said God understands how we are when we suffer which is why He included them in the bible. Under the unbelievable suffering Jesus endured He quoted one of those Psalms. Dismissive statements about suffering remind me of Jobs friends. God was not pleased with them in the least. It may sound confusing but in Job 42:7 God say’s He’s angry with Job’s friends. Because they had not spoken the truth about Him as His servant Job had.
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Right. And what were they saying? That Job’s suffering was his own fault. That God had brought it on Job because of his own sin. But when God finally steps into the narrative, He exonerates Job of wrongdoing and instead takes responsibility for everything… predation, chaos monsters, storms, earthquakes… all of it. In the end, Job repents. For what? I think it’s for engaging in the flip-side of what the friends said. They said Job was guilty, which was why he suffered. Job insisted he was innocent, so he didn’t deserve to suffer. Both Job and his “friends” tie Suffering directly to human action, rather than the inscrutable wisdom and purpose of God.
None of this dismisses the reality of suffering, or how it affects those who suffer (which is all of us, though to varying degrees). What it does mean is that we’re out of our depth when we talk about a “problem of suffering”; because as I see God depicted in Job, suffering is in fact part of the grand design – as uncomfortable an idea as that may be (i.e. the problem of “the problem of suffering”).
Now, your original question was:
What’s your definition of “good”, such that God is unjustified in calling evolution “good”?
Trick question, right? On a couple of levels, even. For starters, God never calls the evolutionary process “good”, since the evolutionary process isn’t in Scripture. God calls an ordered, structured creation “good” – and I take “good” to mean basically that God got what he intended (and how could it have been otherwise?).
Now, if you want to claim that the process is vicious and cruel, there are at least a couple of points to consider. 1) how would you get conscious beings in a material universe without evolution, and how can you have evolution without predation and suffering? 2) Evolution is just a natural process and it’s nonsensical to speak of it being “vicious and cruel”. Only conscious, self-aware beings can be vicious and cruel. Hyenas and wasps and parasites just do what hyenas, wasps, and parasites do. In essence, you’re asking not “Why did God call a vicious and cruel process ‘good’?”, but “Why was God vicious and cruel in creating evolution?” To which I might reply “What is your standard of viciousness and cruelty?”
We alone, of all the animals, look on the process that produced us and condemn it. Isn’t that strange? In evolutionary terms, what sort of survival advantage could that possibly provide? It’s… well… unnatural. This is extremely counterintuitive. So much so that the ancients, who had no idea of evolution, just assumed that when the world was created it must not have been that way and that we broke it. And if one wants to reject evolutionary creation in favor of some other theory that ensures suffering is all on us, there are many options on offer. But what if – as with Job – the existence of Suffering isn’t somehow necessarily a punishment for something we did. Maybe this standard of “viciousness and cruelty” with which we judge creation, this… knowledge of good and evil… is something else entirely… Maybe this sense of “that is wrong!” gives us our purpose: for to be able to bring order out of chaos, one must first be able to know both order and chaos. So per G. K. Chesterton (and to connect two threads): can we hate the world enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?
If you were God, and wanted to create beings like that – beings like You – how would you do it?
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um, God could just create them? I mean, it is a logical possibility.
And humans and all our behavior are the end result of that natural process and just as much part of it as anything other animals do. So if human behavior is also “just a natural process” (which it is, no?) then it also cannot be “vicious and cruel”?
For that matter, how do we know that we are the “end” of evolution? for all we know, we still may right in the middle of the process by which God is making a more complete or final product. so what humans do cannot be described as “vicious and cruel”, as it may similarly be simply part of the natural evolutionary process that God is using to accomplish?
What God could do and what God apparently did are two very different questions; especially in the mind of anyone who maintains a sharp mental divide between so-called natural and supernatural processes.
It also seems to me that, whether humans are ‘complete’ in our development or not, we have been expected in our present form to be able to discern and judge for ourselves between cruelty and kindness. I.e. whatever else one may think of our fallen nature, never have we been excused from using our own judgment to ‘taste and see’ and finally even judge for ourselves between good and evil. Indeed, if that expectation were not there, the entire corpus of appeal throughout scriptures would have all been a useless exercise with us.
It isn’t that we can’t regrettably deceive ourselves in these matters, even in wider cultural ways and for tragically long seasons - generations even. Witness the period of judges when ‘everyone did what was right in his own eyes.’ And yet even so; we’re now meant to reflect on those stories, as well as what is set before us now, and … judge for ourselves!
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Is it? We humans are the only conscious, self-aware, willful, and creative creatures we know. But what makes us that way are our experiences and memories, particularly our experiences and memories of being raised by and living with other humans. But having experiences requires time and history and society, things which wouldn’t exist for a human created de novo. Try to imagine such a human being: never had parents or friends, has no memories, never felt pleasure or pain, never made a choice, never slept, never dreamed, never imagined, never spoke, never desired… I don’t know about you, but all I come up with is “zombie”.
Now, just because I can’t imagine it doesn’t mean it isn’t a logical possibility. But at this point, I have no reason to believe it is, any more than I have reason to believe a four-sided triangle is possible (which I also can’t imagine).
If one is a materialist, then, yes. And now you see the “Problem of the Problem of Suffering” for the atheist materialist.
I, however, am not a materialist. As a Christian, I hold that humans bear the image of God. We have knowledge of good and evil, we have will, and we create (i.e. we see things that do not exist and then bring them into being). These to me do not seem to be purely material properties, but are rooted in something deeper than the physical universe: namely, the God who created it. When we treat other members of our species in a way that maximizes our benefit at their expense, we are simply behaving in accordance with our nature as evolved creatures. When we look at someone doing that and proclaim them to be vicious and cruel, we are behaving in accordance with our nature as bearers of the Divine image.
I hold that we are the “end” of evolution because there is an unbelievably vast chasm between us and the next most advanced animal. I hold that self-consciousness, will, and creativity require more than natural process to come into being. And above all, as a Christian I hold that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Where St. Paul may have been thinking of only Torah by the term “law”, I think “natural law” may be reasonably included – for what else do we learn from Resurrection if not at least that? Jesus is the inflection point… the point at which we reach “escape velocity”. Evolution has served its purpose. Now we move onwards to New Creation…
(edited for typos)
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This is how I see it as a theist.
The problem of suffering is not clear if you are an atheist and/or scientist because you consider only the material exists and nothing else. So the cause of suffering has to be something physical. But really the scientific evidence does not support this even though every effort is made to make it so.
If you are a theist then you believe that there is more than the physical. Certainly there is the spiritual but there is also the mental realm or The Mind. Ideas are not physical, even though there are physical reactions that take place in the brain when the person perceives them or thinks them as a physical being.
So how does that explain suffering?
An idea, which a person believes is their own thinking, carries their authority. If that idea is negative then they may react to it in a way that creates adverse reactions in the body. If this persists over time then the adverse reactions continue and we call this suffering and in fact disease.
If the person can appreciate that some ideas may be mental perceptions of suggestions made to them by someone related, then the whole picture changes. If the idea is negative, then it comes from someone not only related but also inhumane, who has some agenda. These ideas carry no authority. They are bogus rubbish. Discarding them frees the person from suffering because they no longer react and thus their body returns to resting metabolism and health. It’s called homeostasis in biomedical science.
How does that show that God exists?
If we consider that the material reality is born out of information. Information is not physical. It exists in The Mind of God, the realm of all information. If the information, which is needed to create the physical realm, is given meaning (rules/laws) and upheld in the Divine Consciousness then the physical reality comes into being and is sustained in its existence as long as the information is upheld by The Supreme Being (God) in the Divine Consciousness.
I’m lost. How is it logical that God created conscious beings from dead matter, which is to say by evolution?
Our behavior is not the result of natural processes. It greatly depends on whether we have a conscience or not. It there is no conscience, i.e., the person has deadened their conscience, then they can be vicious and cruel. If they have a conscience then they will not be vicious and cruel. They may act to protect their life if needed but they are not going to exploit, abuse, misuse and harm others etc., for some personal gain or advantage.
And at the end of the day conscience is something given by God. It is a spiritual attribute. If we are alive in spirit then we are spiritually connected to others, i.e., we have agape or universal love. If we are spiritually darkened then we are disconnected from others and harbor hate.
But evolution does not involve any claim of “life from dead matter”. Quite the opposite, in fact. Evolution is about life and its changes from pre-existing life.
@mitchellmckain has a creative association for it: a golem.
And like both of you, I share in that skepticism; namely that any de novo “adult” that just got inserted into an environment would not have any kind of meaningful continuity with us … certainly not in any way that later scriptures require when they compare Adam with Christ, who most certainly does have meaningful continuity with humanity - full embeddedness within lineage and family as is also needed, then for Adam. To imagine him a sort of clueless golem who would then require some sort of “instant download” of programming in order to function at all is (to my thinking) a fatal theological problem for those who wish to insert that requirement.
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Yeah, I like “golem” better than “zombie”. I was actually thinking “zombie” more in the way philosophers use the term, rather than the lurching, brain-eating undead. But “golem” avoids that association altogether.
Thanks…
That is confusing the theory of evolution with the hypothesis of abiogenesis. Most scientists do believe the abiogenesis hypothesis is correct and do not take the alternative hypothesis of pangenesis very seriously. You might get the impression that Richard Dawkins takes pangenesis seriously, but I suspect (I could be wrong) that he is just trying to make it clear that the theory of evolution is not abiogenesis – two totally different things.
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It is particularly the idea of shaping them out of dust or bone and using magic to animate them that sounds like the golems of the necromancer in the game of Diablo.
Yes, I worded it badly.
“Life and its changes from pre-existing life”, but the only thing that is considered is the body, the genetic changes, which are seen as random and any advantages that those random changes may offer in the environment.
Life for me involves a conscious being. And sure while there is life the body is animated but it essentially is simply matter. And evolution only deals with random changes, not anything deliberate or directed.