The Problem of Evil and the Existence of God
McGraw-Hill
*© 2013 McGraw-Hill Companies. All Rights Reserved.
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The Problem of Evil and the Existence of God
- How is it possible for there to be an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good God given that there is so much evil in the world?
- What evidence is there that such a God exists?
- Must we be created by God in order for our lives to be meaningful?
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Types of Beliefs in God
- Theist—one who believes in a personal god who rules the world.
- Agnostic—one who neither believes nor disbelieves in god.
- Atheist—one who disbelieves in god.
- Deist—one who believes that god created the universe and then abandoned it.
- Pantheist—one who believes that the universe is god.
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Thought Probe: Biblical Truths
- Modern archaeology has failed to find confirming evidence for many of the Bible’s historical claims.
- Does this undercut the credibility of its non-historical claims? Why or why not?
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Thought Probe: Deluded Believers
- No major religion is believed by more than about 25% of the world’s population.
- That means that over 75% of the human population is mistaken about the true nature of God.
- How do you know you’re not in that 75%?
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Thought Probe: Holy Scripture
- Suppose you’re a space explorer who lands on a planet where there are a number of different religions.
- Each religion is based on a holy book supposedly written by God.
- To determine which, if any, of these books was written by God, what would you look for?
- Do any of our holy books possess these characteristics?
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Section 6.1
The Mysterious Universe
God as Creator
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Cosmological Arguments for the Existence of God
- Cosmological arguments for the existence of God attempt to derive the existence of God from the existence of the universe.
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The Traditional Cosmological Argument
Some things are caused.
Nothing can cause itself.
Therefore, everything that is caused is caused by something other than itself.
The chain of causes cannot stretch infinitely backwards in time.
If the chain of causes cannot stretch infinitely backward in time, there must be a first cause.
Therefore, everything that is caused has a first cause, namely, God.
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Problems with the Traditional Cosmological Argument
- Even if there is a first cause, it doesn’t have to be God.
- The notion of an infinite string of causes is no more self-contradictory than the notion of an infinite string of numbers.
- So the universe itself may be eternal.
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The Kalam Cosmological Argument
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe had a cause, namely God.
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Problems with the Kalam Cosmological Argument
- Modern physics recognizes that some events have no cause.
- The “big bang” could have been the result of a prior “big crunch” either in this universe or some other.
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Thought Probe: Why a Universe?
- God is eternal, but the universe seems to be only about 15 billion years old.
- Why, after an eternity of time had passed, did God decide to create a universe?
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Teleological Arguments for the Existence of God
- Teleological arguments for the existence of God try to derive the existence of God from the design or purpose of things.
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Thought Experiment: Paley’s Watch
- Suppose you were walking across a meadow and came across a watch.
- Could you believe that the watch had always been there?
- Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to believe that someone had designed it for the purpose of keeping time?
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The Analogical Design Argument
The universe resembles a watch.
Every watch has a designer.
Therefore, the universe probably has a designer, namely, God.
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Problems with the Analogical Design Argument
- If God needs a universe to accomplish his ends, he is not omnipotent.
- Even if there is a designer, it need not have any of the other attributes traditionally associated with God, such as omniscience or omnibenevolence.
- The universe is as much like a living thing as a mechanism and living things reproduce without need of an external agent.
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The Best-Explanation Design Argument
The universe exhibits apparent design.
The best explanation of this apparent design is that it was designed by a supernatural being.
Therefore it’s probable that the universe was designed by a supernatural being, namely, God.
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Problems with the Best-explanation Design Argument
- Apparent design can also be explained by evolution.
- Evolution is a better explanation than the God-hypothesis because it is simpler, more conservative, has greater scope, and is more fruitful.
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Irreducible Complexity
- A structure is irreducibly complex when it would cease to function if one of its components were removed.
- According to Michael Behe, irreducibly complex structures “cannot be produced directly” by the processes of evolution.
- Most biologists reject Behe’s claim.
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Exaptation
- The process by which a structure that originally served one function comes to serve another.
- Darwin himself recognized that many systems are composed of parts that originally evolved for other purposes.
- Thus irreducibly complex systems can arise naturally.
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Self-organizing Structures
- Structures that acquire structure without input from outside the system.
- Some self-organizing systems, like the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, are irreducibly complex.
- Thus irreducibly complex systems can arise naturally.
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Thought Probe: Intelligent Design
- Even if life on Earth is the result of intelligent design, the designer need not be God.
- The Raelians believe that life on Earth is the result of a science experiment that was conducted by advanced aliens.
- Which hypothesis – the God hypothesis or the extraterrestrial hypothesis – is the better explanation? Which does better with respect to the criteria of adequacy?
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The Fine-Tuning Argument
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