Richard Dawkins on the Problem of Evil
The Theology of the Tsunami
by Richard Dawkins
Op-Ed column in Free Inquiry 25 (3), 12-13, April/May 2005
I have never found the problem of evil very persuasive as an argument against deities. There seems no obvious reason to presume that your God will be good. The question for me is why you think any God, good or evil or indifferent, exists at all. Most of the Greek pantheon sported very human vices, and the ‘jealous God’ of the Old Testament is surely one of the nastiest, most truly evil characters in all fiction. Tsunamis would be just up his street, and the more misery and mayhem the better. I have always thought the ‘Problem of Evil’ was a rather trivial problem for theists, compared to the Argument from Improbability which is a genuinely powerful, indeed knockdown argument against the very existence of all forms of unevolved creative intelligence.
Nevertheless, my experience is that godly people, who show no evidence of even beginning to understand the Argument from Improbability, are reduced to quivering embarrassment if not outright loss of faith, when confronted with a natural disaster or a major pestilence. Earthquakes, in particular, have traditionally shaken people’s faith in a benevolent deity, and December’s tsunami provoked a lot of agonized soul-searching on the question “How can religious people explain something like this?” The most prominent apparent quaverer was the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Anglican communion. It turned out that he had been traduced by the Daily Telegraph, a notoriously irresponsible and mischievous newspaper and one of several London newspapers which devoted many column inches to this knotty theological conundrum. It turned out that the Archbishop had not in fact said that the tsunami shook his own faith, only that he could sympathize with those who did have doubts.
The most famous precedent, several commentators reminded us, is the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which deeply disturbed Kant and provoked Voltaire’s mockery in Candide. The Guardian published a flurry of Letters to the Editor, headed by one from the Bishop of Lincoln who asked God to preserve us from religious people who try to ‘explain’ the tsunami. Other letters attempted just that. One clergyman conceded that there was no intellectual answer: just hints of an explanation which “will only be found in a life lived by faith, prayer, contemplation and Christian action.” Another clergymen cited the Book of Job, and he thought he had found the beginnings of an explanation for suffering in Paul’s idea that the whole universe was experiencing something akin to the pains of a woman in childbirth:
“The argument for the existence of God from design would be fatally flawed if the universe were seen as complete already. Religious believers see the totality of experience as part of a greater narrative moving towards an as yet unimaginable goal.”
Is this the kind of thing theologians are paid to do? At least he didn’t sink to the level of a Professor of Theology in my University who once suggested, during a televised discussion with me and my colleague Peter Atkins among others, that the holocaust was God’s way of giving the Jews the opportunity to be brave and noble – a remark which prompted Dr Atkins to growl, “May you rot in hell!”
My own initial response to the correspondence on the tsunami was published the following day:
“The Bishop of Lincoln (Letters, December 29) asks to be preserved from religious people who try to explain the tsunami disaster. As well he might. Religious explanations for such tragedies range from loopy (it's payback for original sin) through vicious (disasters are sent to try our faith) to violent (after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, heretics were hanged for provoking God's wrath). But I'd rather be preserved from religious people who give up on trying to explain, yet remain religious.
In the same batch of letters, Dan Rickman says "science provides an explanation of the mechanism of the tsunami but it cannot say why this occurred any more than religion can". There, in one sentence, we have the religious mind displayed before us in all its absurdity. In what sense of the word "why", does plate tectonics not provide the answer?
Not only does science know why the tsunami happened, it can give precious hours of warning. If a small fraction of the tax breaks handed out to churches, mosques and synagogues had been diverted into an early warning system, tens of thousands of people, now dead, would have been moved to safety.
Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.”
Letters to the Editor necessarily have to be brief, and I failed to insure myself against the obvious charge of callousness. Among the onslaught that flooded the letters page the next day, one woman wondered what comfort science could offer to a parent whose child had been swept out to sea. Three letters were from doctors, who could justly claim more experience of human suffering than I could match. One of them deployed a bizarrely literal-minded interpretation of Darwinism: “If I were an atheist, I can’t imagine why I should bother to help anyone whose genes might compete with mine.” Another lashed petulantly out at science “cloning sheep or cats”. The third lashed out at me personally, describing me as his personal bogeyman: “the atheist version of a door-stepping Jehovah’s Witness’. An ayatollah without a deity – God help us.”
I don’t usually come back for a second go, but I was anxious to dispel wanton misunderstanding, so I sent in another letter which was published the day after:
It is true that science cannot offer the consolations that your correspondents attribute to prayer, and I am sorry if I seemed a callous ayatollah or a doorstepping bogeyman (Letters, December 31). It is psychologically possible to derive comfort from sincere belief in a nonexistent illusion, but -- silly me -- I thought believers might be disillusioned with an omnipotent being who had just drowned 125,000 innocent people (or an omniscient one who failed to warn them). Of course, if you can derive comfort from such a monster, I would not wish to deprive you.
My naive guess was that believers might be feeling more inclined to curse their God than pray to him, and maybe there’s some dark comfort in that. But I was trying, however insensitively, to offer a gentler and more constructive alternative. You don’t have to be a believer. Maybe there’s nobody there to curse. Maybe we are on our own, in a world where plate tectonic and other natural forces occasionally cause appalling catastrophes. Science cannot (yet) prevent earthquakes, but science could have provided just enough warning of the Boxing Day tsunami to save most of the victims and spare the bereaved. Even worse lowland floodings of the future are threatened by global warming which is preventable by human action, guided by science. And if the comforts afforded by outstretched human arms, warm human words and heartbroken human generosity seem puny against the agony, they at least have the advantage of existing in the real world.
One of the most popular of religious responses to natural disasters is the “Why me?” response. This underlay several of the replies to the first of my letters to the Guardian. One actually berated science for its inability to answer the ‘why me’ question. And that really doesn’t merit a response.
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He mentions Voltaire, my favorite French author and philosopher!
Candide discovering El Dorado
I like Dawkins. But he seems to have a chip on his shoulder. As long as humans are driven by emotions science will have to take a back seat. That just seems like a fact and as well proven as evolution.
Let us, in the mean time, all get a piece of... Cornholio before the WWF and American Idol join the mega-churches in building the next tsunami of the republican party. tgs
I call myself agnostic, even though in truth I'm an atheist, in part to appease my Mother. Both of my parents are ordained ministers (they met in seminary :) ). My Mother and I generally try to avoid having conversations about religion with each other, respecting our opposing views. The last time she was out here visiting, however, the hurricane season had just ended, and I asked her how her loving God could create natural disasters that destroy so many lives, or how it could permit the man-made atrocities that have taken place throughout history? I wasn't being facetious, I really wanted to know what she believed. She said, in so many words, that only God knows the reasoning, and that faith is believing that God's reasons are ultimately for the best.
If you could have heard the conviction in her voice, you might understand why I didn't respond further, even though to me, it sounded more like a remarkably convenient cop-out than anything else.
But she really believed it.
PKRWUD, thanks for sharing. But I did understand your mother's view point and dilemna.
To ask a faithful to consider that there may be no rhyme or reason to life or why some things happened while others don't is to horrible a possibility for them to comtemplate.
It's not the possibility of not having God watching over them.
It's the possibility that everything that happened, which includes us, happened because of chance.
Or a cosmic joke of epic/biblical proportions.
All I can say for a view point is that God can never have any reasons for innocent children to die by such violent means. It does not help the cause of good at all in any way.
Loss is sobering, not enlightening.
I'm not religious in the slightest, but I find the man aggravating. Everytime I hear of him it is because he has taken a frustratingly aggressive posture, and in truth added very little to the real debate. He brings himself down to the lowest levels, so that he can point out the absurdity as he sees it, to people who will never listen.
It's not that I necessarily disagree with what he is saying, it's that I disagree with the fact he seems to feel compelled to say it in the way he does, again and again.
Do also remind her that if you credit God for life's miracles and thank him him for it, you should also hold him accountable for life's tragedies.
Fair is fair.
Back when 'sleeping sickness was the scourge of the Southern states, with thousands of victims, the people piled into churches to ask God to save them from his scourge.
When godless science found the source of the disease and how to cure it, those same people piled into their churches to thank God for the cure.
Hi Renideo, I agree with you as Dawkins tone and manner is too close to a holier-tan-thou attitude for comfort.
It's hard to want to idenitfy or agree with him with his tone and manner, even though what he says has a lot of truths in it.
Actually its people like him as well as religious zealots that made me find a comfortable perch in-between as a humanist who believes in the sanctity of some universal values and treasured voice of reason.
I stopped calling myself a Christian years ago. But although I reject organized religion outright I do still believe in (oh, this word is so loaded but, shucks, it's all I've got) God.
And I've got no problem squaring my belief in the divine with natural disasters, human suffering, holocausts, wars, etc. I could take miles of space here to explain but I'll try to keep it brief... please excuse me if attempting brevity results in a seeming oversimplification.
I believe that this world is our creation, not God's. We create our reality in every moment of our existence. Even our "existence" in a physical world is part of our creation.
Something akin to Rene Descartes, who in trying to prove the existence of anything at all, including himself, was reduced to merely "I think, therefore I am." (Of course, anyone here could probably rip me a new one dismantling Descartes – and my simplification here – but my point is that Descartes reached the point in his meditation where he could only be certain that he existed.)
ie... it's impossible to prove that anything external exists without using something external – eyes, ears, senses, objects – as the verifying source. My personal shorthand: the color purple. When you and someone else are looking at a color that you both call "purple" are you seeing the same thing? Can you prove it?
So, if nothing exists beyond an individual's thought and the external world is the individual's creation then everything that happens, every event, is part of that creation. Including interpretations of events as "good" or "evil," which don't exist outside of the individual's assignation.
Most importantly, this includes the belief in a physical body which can "die."
If you've followed me this far (and thanks for bothering) the logical question is... yeah, so where does God come in?
Well, since I believe that only my thoughts exist, and not my physical body, which doesn't exist and therefore can't die, and not the external world, which is my creation, then I have to conclude that the "I am" is not of temporal world. Thus I conclude that "I am more than this – more than this world." And that "more than" is what I call God.
And so the "why" of wars and pestilence and disaster is not a question for God but a question for me... why am I creating this? And since I do believe in a "we," in others' existence outside mine (and you're just going to have to trust me that I have thought that one out since I've already droned on far too long here) "Why are we creating this?"
Hi Dee,
I'm totally okay with existing in your world as a creation of yours, but it would be even better if you could tell me what tomorrow night's Lotto numbers are going to be. :)
Interesting perspective. The one truth that has always bothered me is that energy never dies. It can move from one object to another, but it never goes away. In your theory, what happens to the energy we possess when we die? Just curious.
What most are probably missing, and what was left out of the original post was the simplified description of "the problem of evil". This is otherwise known as "theodicy".
This is a very old matter that has been examined inside and out (not that every angle has been explored, but to understand it fully, one should do much research, that much I know).
It starts with a simple logical syllogism: - God is omniscient and omnipotent (God created the universe, etc.), - God is good, - Evil exists.
Clearly, illogical on the surface. Various commentators have taken differing views or presented alternate means to recconcile the illogic.
St. Augustine would propose that evil does not exist. This is something expressed by the mother's hurricane explanation. I take the view that we don't fully understand God to the point of understaning God's goals or objectives, Augustinian, but different somewhat.
My girlfriend, an ordained minister, professor of Old Testament, and a scholar, takes the view that God is not all powerful, that there are things outside of God's control. In part, she does not believe that God is not all good and would rather God not be omnipotent. Using the hurricane example, she believes that if God is supposed to be all powerful, there are better ways to achieve God's goals than the send a hurricane to wipe out an entire city.
It's a good point and worthy of further examination, which is why this issue has occupied theologians for centuries. I personally want to believe that the universe is so complex and extensive that we will never know everything that needs to be known. Even if we someday understand every chemical and physical process on the planet and can explain how every living organism works, we will never know enough to explain all possible chemical and physical process throughout the universe. What we know of our own world only becomes a theory to explain others.
It's too simplistic, and easy, to resort to the apparently sophomoric logic of people like Dawkins. That is only the anti-faith argument equivalent to the right wing fundamentalist conservatives to interpret the bible literally and that all we need to know is revealed in the bible without interpretation.
Fmischler, I don't think Dawkins is addressing the issue of whether there's evil in the world; probably he doesn't care. I think he simply says that theodicy is just unnecesary theological acrobatics. His point is, "why bother?"
Dee, very good points and very well expressed. No one’s going to rip into Descartes as his essential premise on the self or his existence is quite watertight: "I think, therefore I am." In fact that’s the only thing he could be 100% sure of. On your statement on whether “ it's impossible to prove that anything external exists without using something external – eyes, ears, senses, objects – as the verifying source” you might want to read up on the writings of the Confucian scholar, Xunzi, who ruminated that when he thinks of a butterfly, is it because he’s a butterfly that’s thinking of him? The concept that reality is transcient and fluid is something Buddism embraced and its focus is on the need to let go of our senses, along with our desires because the reality that we see is just a dream.
I’m not comfortable with this viewpoint actually but you may want to read up a little on it if you are interested in exploring this aspect of viewing reality.
Fmischler, I agree with your girlfriend that God is not all-powerful. He created the world in 7 days because he couldn’t do it in one. Presumably, he needed some things to happen first before he can move on to the next. Thus regardless of how powerful he may be, his actions are still bound by time.
However, I think the greatest limitations on God’s powers are placed by his own followers. He assumes that God needs to have words, laws and need to send someone to earth to do his work and perform miracles. Doesn’t that suggest his limitations?
Also the very idea that God needs to work through words or laws, instead of other means that are more infallible, makes him seem human and as fallible as a human being.
This fits with the view of how gods came about as men in the past worship the elements as gods and in doing so gave them human shape and form, as well as its limitations. For example, some of the male gods were promiscuous, which reflected a human condition.
This is a great thread! So many interesting and thought-provoking post and all presented with civility and intelligence. You all are awesome! Kes, thanks for your reading tips. I googled Xunzi and found some interesting stuff. Will be reading up! Fmischler, your comparison of Dawson and fundmentalism as two sides of the same coin was spot on. I never thought of it that way before... thanks for the eye-opener.
Dawson seems to limit himself to railing against Christian theology and to me, that's like shooting fish in a barrel. He doesn't really prove that there is no God, he just proves that the Christian version of God is flawed. Duh.
I believe the function of the piece is to remove the "why me?" theology that infuses Job and many religious people. Many religious groups do feel that everything in their life has a purpose (some literally believe it is ALL from god).
Dawkin's piece is more on personal responsibility for how we react to sistuations. Instead of wodnering whether a drought was due to disobedience to commandment x, we could be focusing on reducing drought overall or developing farming techniques that require less water, etc.
Dawkins says himself that he doesn't find the argument from evil (that evil exists and therefore god sucks) as convincing or airtight.
If you must take the anti-religion argument that he champions, it would be the argument about complexity. That if a bloody world is so complex as to need a creator that god himself would need a creator too. That debate is not the focus of the essay.
Rather, it is to encourage people that you can be moral and focus on secular means of saving the world rather than sit praying to some omni or sub-omni deity. Obviously, if not all religions are correct, than we can surely chip in for the one protection we can all use!
Cheers, David Peters
David, well put. I like your following point:
"If you must take the anti-religion argument that he champions, it would be the argument about complexity. That if a bloody world is so complex as to need a creator that god himself would need a creator too."
PKRWUD above wrote that his mother felt about the tsunami "only God knows the reasoning, and that faith is believing that God's reasons are ultimately for the best". "kes" ascribes this kind of faith, and faith in general, to a set of childish wish-fulfillment needs.
While I'm not a "believer", I admit the possibility that there is some reasoning going on that isn't available to my understanding, to my limited intellect. Just because science can't "prove" the existence of a greater intelligence of course does not mean that some kind of directed force doesn't exist.
Whether anyone's faith is a prehistoric remnant, based in the need for the archetypal father-figure is neither here nor there. (I agree that this is what it is, but so what?) The fact is that, independent of the deluded who mediate the gods for the masses and of the drugged masses themselves, science can't know, you can't know whether there is a complex intelligence around independent of the machinery of nature.
"Scientists" ought to have that humility. It's easy to clearly decimate the bull that is organized religion. It's harder to see past the damage that this "virus" (as Dawkins calls it) has done and admit that it can't be proven one way or the other. Why do you need certainty when we clearly don't have the tools to know the answer?
I think a lot of adherents of Atheism are blind to their own emotional reaction to the folly of religion, and to their need to be detached from the possibility of a kind of system outside the reach of the senses and the scientific method.
PKRWUD above wrote that his mother felt about the tsunami "only God knows the reasoning, and that faith is believing that God's reasons are ultimately for the best". "kes" ascribes this kind of faith, and faith in general, to a set of childish wish-fulfillment needs.
While I'm not a "believer", I admit the possibility that there is some reasoning going on that isn't available to my understanding, to my limited intellect. Just because science can't "prove" the existence of a greater intelligence of course does not mean that some kind of directed force doesn't exist.
Whether anyone's faith is a prehistoric remnant, based in the need for the archetypal father-figure is neither here nor there. (I agree that this is what it is, but so what?) The fact is that, independent of the deluded who mediate the gods for the masses and of the drugged masses themselves, science can't know, you can't know whether there is a complex intelligence around independent of the machinery of nature.
"Scientists" ought to have that humility. It's easy to clearly decimate the bull that is organized religion. It's harder to see past the damage that this "virus" (as Dawkins calls it) has done and admit that it can't be proven one way or the other. Why do you need certainty when we clearly don't have the tools to know the answer?
I think a lot of adherents of Atheism are blind to their own emotional reaction to the folly of religion, and to their need to be detached from the possibility of a kind of system outside the reach of the senses and the scientific method.
Nicely said, forestflyer. I agree with you that scientists needs to exert more humility in their comments against the religious crowd.
However my comments are that we impose our views of what God should be on God as the culmination of our own self-fulfilling prophecies.
If I believe God created me, then I have to believe that he is behind every good and bad thing that happens to me.
Such beliefs create a barrier to understanding the world in a naturalistic and spontaneous way.
My view is simple. I think belief in a god or gods is a good thing as long as it helps people to do good things.
I just don't think the Church and the Bible are good things though. They are propaganda machines with no more monopoly on the truth than any classical works of man in the past.
And I know a lot more books that holds more truth and created far less damage than the Bible. At the very least, the books I read asks me to focus on my relationship with the world, the universe and the people around me.
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