Apparently, they are discussing the problem of evil lately as featured on their facebook page (linked above). The latest event is entitled, "The Problem of Evil - A Real Solution" (try to look past the obnoxious title). I've noticed that web traffic to my blog has picked up a lot in recent days and in particular, my posts regarding Gangadean's theodicy. Perhaps one phenomena has something to do with the other.
I've written about some very specific problems I see with Gangadean's "real solution" to the problem of evil (here and here), but have so far only scratched the surface. So I wanted to say a few things for those who may have encountered Gangadean's "Ironic Solution" to the problem of evil. Perhaps even those that have attended the recent Ratio Christi meeting.
First, some ground clearing:
Gangadean and his people tend to focus solely on the logical problem of evil. There are at least two problems, the logical and the evidential one. The former is the stronger of the two. It threatens to make theism internally inconsistent. Gangadean usually presents it via the work of David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. In more recent times, and perhaps more precisely stated, we find a formulation of the problem by the philosopher J.L Mackie in his article, "Evil and Omnipotence." Mackie doesn't distinguish between moral and natural evil, but it is standardly accepted that there are two (though it's hard to prove such a thing---something Gangadean and company really ought to do insofar as they make appeals to the distinction). However, the distinction is not crucial for Mackie's argument since he can use the generic term 'evil' to include both types. Briefly, here's the logical problem of evil: God according to standard conceptions of the Abrahamic traditions is perfectly good and all powerful. Hence, the very presence of evil is logically incompatible with these of his attributes. *But clearly there is evil in the world*, which entails that God simply does not exist on pain of logical contradiction.
The premise surrounded by '*' is one that is taken for granted between the two parties. It's not provable in the strong sense since it's an empirical claim infused with a value judgment. It's supposed to be patently obvious that there is much suffering, misery, pain and the like in the world and that these are bad things. For the logical problem of evil to be a problem though, I would add that such instances can't just be evils per se, but the sorts of evils that are logically incompatible with whatever goodness is traditionally ascribed to God in theistic formulations. Things get a bit tricky here. Some suggest then that the sort of evils that cause problems for theism (as in the logical problem) must be something like gratuitous evils. If so, it's a bit less obvious that there are gratuitous evils in the world. I mean, it certainly seems that way to me when I hear about some of the horrendous evils in the world, but it's not something I'm sure about. Skeptical theists (I'll talk about this view a bit later) apply pressure on these very considerations. When the wielder of the logical problem of evil assumes as one of her premises that there are a great many instances of evil in the world, they presuppose that these very evils are the sorts of evils that are logically incompatible with God's perfect goodness and power. That's far from obvious and sometimes even feels a bit question begging against the theist. Gangadean ignores all of this. I don't know if it's due to ignorance or because he's got an axe to grind. I add the latter clause because he thinks he's got the "real solution" to the problem of evil and dismisses other purported solutions before offering his. If other solutions fare at least as well as his "solution" or perhaps even better, then he's sort of out of a job in this respect.
The premise surrounded by '*' is one that is taken for granted between the two parties. It's not provable in the strong sense since it's an empirical claim infused with a value judgment. It's supposed to be patently obvious that there is much suffering, misery, pain and the like in the world and that these are bad things. For the logical problem of evil to be a problem though, I would add that such instances can't just be evils per se, but the sorts of evils that are logically incompatible with whatever goodness is traditionally ascribed to God in theistic formulations. Things get a bit tricky here. Some suggest then that the sort of evils that cause problems for theism (as in the logical problem) must be something like gratuitous evils. If so, it's a bit less obvious that there are gratuitous evils in the world. I mean, it certainly seems that way to me when I hear about some of the horrendous evils in the world, but it's not something I'm sure about. Skeptical theists (I'll talk about this view a bit later) apply pressure on these very considerations. When the wielder of the logical problem of evil assumes as one of her premises that there are a great many instances of evil in the world, they presuppose that these very evils are the sorts of evils that are logically incompatible with God's perfect goodness and power. That's far from obvious and sometimes even feels a bit question begging against the theist. Gangadean ignores all of this. I don't know if it's due to ignorance or because he's got an axe to grind. I add the latter clause because he thinks he's got the "real solution" to the problem of evil and dismisses other purported solutions before offering his. If other solutions fare at least as well as his "solution" or perhaps even better, then he's sort of out of a job in this respect.
One thing to note is that Gangadean seems to be working from an outdated playbook in certain respects. Even Mackie's paper, written in the 50's, though much more recent than Hume's, is fairly dated. The general consensus is (among both theists and non-theists working in this area) that the logical problem of evil is not really a problem. It was far too ambitious. Showing that something like Theism is utterly incoherent, that is, to show that there's a logical contradiction between evil and God's attributes proved to be too much for anybody. It has thus given way to what is call the evidential problem of evil, which is a weaker problem. The weaker formulation basically states that while the presence of evil doesn't disprove God's existence, it provides at least some evidence that God doesn't exist. But Gangadean often ignores this and so he thinks that the logical problem is really a problem. It's a rather odd response. I mean, even atheist philosophers like the powerhouse David Lewis (see his exceptional paper, "Evil for Freedom's sake") admit that the logical problem is dismantled by the work of Plantinga. Now Lewis thinks there are problems that remain for the theist, but it's not one of logical incoherence i.e., he doesn't think there's actually a logical problem of evil. The same is said of the late, William Rowe---another atheist who was arguably one of the most influential persons working in philosophy of religion in recent times. He presented us the Evidential Problem of Evil (in the 70's) because he recognized the logical problem was no real problem at all. So why does Gangadean insist that the logical problem of evil is something that the theist must address? Your guess is as good as mine. I suppose he just misunderstands the issues and is anxious to contribute something he thinks is significant to the debate. He very briefly considers some possible solutions, and then suggests they are insufficient (but certainly hasn't proven that). One of these he calls the "free will solution"--and by this he really means a family of views. He doesn't, in print, consider in any depth what is widely accepted as the most rigorously presented defense of this sort, called the Free Will Defense by Alvin Plantinga (1979). And I think Gangadean is far too quick in dismissing all free will solutions, in part because he fails to track the subtler terms of the debate which I'm learning is a common occurrence --he's just not that careful a scholar in my opinion. The same is true of his quick dismissals of what is called skeptical theism which I want to focus some on.
Plantinga's free will defense is tricky. It involves evaluating counterfactual statements, which invariably involves possible-worlds semantics (a formal model of the truth conditions of statements involving modal terms). Maybe I'll spend a few posts on it someday, but for the moment I want to simply state that Gangadean's dismissal of all free will solutions had better engage with Plantinga's paper, which is widely received as the best and most sophisticated account (at least if he wants to be charitable).
What I want to focus on today is the other family of views that he hastily dismisses. In his book, Gangadean writes,
What I want to focus on today is the other family of views that he hastily dismisses. In his book, Gangadean writes,
A response to this [failures to account for the problem evil] is to appeal to mystery. The answer is beyond human ken, utterly. There is not a contradiction here, it is said, only a paradox, wrapped in mystery. For all we know, there is a good reason God allows evil and just so much evil...but he has not chosen to make it known to us. Another solution, more promising than an appeal to unknown, is along the lines of Hume's suggestion that for all we know there may be an easy solution. (110).Skeptical theists contend that our understanding of the possible goods and evils there are is quite limited. Importantly, they are not saying that we can't know anything about what is good or evil. On the contrary, the idea is that we have a limited grasp of such things. We aren't in a position to, with much confidence think that the goods and evils we know of are representative of all the possible good and evil states of affairs that there are. The skeptical theist doesn't take these premises to be very controversial and partially motivate them by considering the many moral puzzles that arise in the realm of ethics where it's often not obvious what the right thing to do is. They also add that our epistemic position with respect to the sorts of entailment relations between the possible goods and evils there are is also limited. That is, when we reason about what evils must be required for certain goods to obtain (or even which goods could be attained without any evils), our reasoning though not entirely useless is limited. Applied to the problem of evil, in particular the logical problem of evil, this raises the issue that the wielder of the problem is over-reaching. They simply aren't in a position to fairly assess whether the sorts of evils there are in the world are logically incompatible with an all-good God owning to the fact that our knowledge of all the possible goods and evils and their logical relationships is limited. Indeed skeptical theism is usually a stronger argument which was intended to object against the weaker, Evidential Problem of Evil. But for our purposes it's enough that it does even less, namely, that it raises sufficient doubts against the logical problem of evil. [Note as a historical fact, skeptical theism isn't usually presented against the logical problem because again most people take the logical problem to be sufficiently answered already].
Curiously, Gangadean never engages with this kind of solution in his manuscript. He merely dismisses it as an appeal to unknown (whatever that is). Beyond Gangadean and his kin, I've never heard anyone say that someone is making an appeal to unknown and I've been around philosophers a lot. So I don't even know what that amounts to or why it's a bad thing in the current context. More importantly though, this is where he's has obviously let the terms of the debate slip. As we've noted, the logical problem of evil is a very ambitious argument. It contends that it's logically or perhaps metaphysically impossible for both God to exist (as all good and all powerful) and for there to be evil in the world. Logical incompatibilities are like the existence of something that is red all over and also not-red all over (at the same time and in the same respect). But what the skeptical theist is pointing out is that the logical problem of evil presupposes that we are in a sufficiently good place epistemically to judge (among other things) all the possible goods that could legitimize God for permitting the evils in our world. What they would say to the challenger is that they ought to make more modest claims like, "it appears to us that there are evils which are incompatible with God's existence because we can't, try as we may, come up with justifying reasons for why God would permit evils." And from such a qualified statement, it simply doesn't follow that therefore, God cannot possibly exist. If we have at least some reason to suspect we aren't in such a great epistemic vantage point, then we've got reason to back off of the logical formulation of the problem. The question that arises at this point is why we need to look any further to Gangadean to save the day? The logical problem is an overstatement and skeptical theism is but one way to show this. So we don't even need to look at Gangadean's "real solution." Furthermore, insofar as skeptical theism is incompatible with Gangadean's "real solution", he will need to show that the former is not even possibly true. That's based on his impossible standards of knowledge and clarity. To know that his theodicy is correct, he's got to show that any and all mutually exclusive alternative theories can't possible be true or that his solution can't possibly be false. So keep this in mind as we continue our discussion of his "ironic/real solution to the problem of evil".
