A Gangadeanian on the Problem of Evil: An ironic problem for the ironic solution.

Here's another video from the Gangadeanian organization called the Clarity Fund in which one of their own (Greg Malloy) presents Gangadean's theodicy (a purported answer to the problem of evil). As you can see in Anderson's introduction, this talk was part of a series at ASU west, where they invite outside speakers. I find it peculiar (and perhaps in bad faith) that Anderson invited Malloy to give the talk because he believes precisely all of the same things that Anderson does --and this by no accident! Malloy is both a student of Gangadean (Anderson's mentor) as well as Anderson himself--and they all belong to the questionable religious organization called Westminster Fellowship. Further, Malloy is basically reading out of Gangadean's book (which Anderson frequently does in his own courses) as opposed to presenting any of his own ideas. As such, Anderson might has well given the talk himself--that would have at least been more honest. I wonder if this is a frequent occurrence and if so, there's probably a conflict of interest.

Anyway, on to the substance. I've tackled the Gangadeanian "answer" to problem of evil before, so some of what I will have to say will be a recapitulation, but this video has again made the related issues salient. Malloy is attempting to provide an answer to the question, "if God is perfectly good and powerful, then whence is there evil?" He faults common theistic responses like the free will theodicy. I won't rehearse those here except to point out that he seems to be leaving out more sophisticated versions of the free will accounts like that of Alvin Plantinga who aims only to show that it is logically possible that God and evil co-exist (that is to say, there's no contradiction between the two states of affairs). Of course, as with any philosophical argument, there are problems, but it isn't obvious that the problems are in the end, decisive despite how Malloy and Gangadean before him present things.

As to Malloy's presentation of Gangadean's theodicy: there is a lot of hand-waviness going on from the start. "The good for a thing is said to be in accordance with the nature of a thing." "The nature of humans is to be rational." "Thus, Evil (moral evil) is contrary to the nature of a rational being which is not knowing God (what is clear and most basic)." There are no arguments given in this presentation for each of these very weighty premises. On several occasions, I've noted that Gangadean is far too quick in taking for granted his claim that the good for humans is to know that God exists.  I keep laboring this point because it plays such an essential role in many of his arguments and his theodicy in particular. If he hasn't proven beyond all doubt that the core moral evil is not knowing that God exists, then his theodicy is a non-starter. How does he argue that good for humans is to know that God exists? Well, he depends on more controversial and unproven claims. For instance, that knowledge of God is knowledge of the "most basic." And that humans are essentially rational beings which just means they are the sorts of beings that ought to know what is most basic. And of course the big whopper, that God's existence is clear to reason. If any of these claims is not proven, then the theodicy is simply a non-starter (more on this point below).

Malloy presents the idea that moral evil has a particular purpose which justifies God in creating the world so that it inevitably would have such evil in it. What is that purpose? It's an intellectual good that only some of creation gets to reap, namely, revelation of God's nature, in particular, his divine justice and mercy. But Malloy (and Gangadean) fails to take care in appreciating just how contentious this is. It's far from trivial that God is in fact morally justified in permitting things like the holocaust just so some of his creation can have true beliefs about his nature. That sounds outright monstrous. Neither is it trivial that God who is all knowing and all powerful, couldn't have come up with a different way to reveal his attributes to his creation. Gangadean must maintain that it's logically impossible for God to reveal his divine attributes to his creatures without creating the conditions for moral evil and that seems like an incredible claim. For one thing, why can't God reveal facts to his creation, directly (either by creating us differently or by making such knowledge innate)? Further, there doesn't have to be evil for us to know how God *would* deal with it---we could come to know counterfactuals about what God would do in certain situations--and that would also count as knowledge about God's nature (i.e., information about the dispositions of a being is important information about that being). You might think that knowledge of what a being actually does is somehow more valuable than what a being would do, but is this difference enough to outweigh all the harms that come from all the countless instances of moral evil that we actually find in our world? An affirmative answer is also far from trivial. Moreover, as the philosopher David Lewis once wondered about, couldn't God have placed us in "playpens" so that the evils we commit are ones that do not bring about harms? For instance, it seems possible for God to have enabled Stalin to think evil thoughts and have evil desires, without also enabling him to exterminate 20 million people. The problems amplify when we incorporate Gangadean's committment to Calvinism, which includes the doctrine of limited atonement (only some receive the revelation that comes at the cost of all the moral evil in the world).

To sum up then, Gangadean's/Malloy's God permits moral evil which leads to countless harms/victims, so that only some people get to realize some intellectual goods, namely knowledge of some of God's attributes. Somehow this is supposed to be a satisfying answer to the question, how can a perfectly good, all powerful being permit moral evil? Where the theodicy flounders is that it doesn't present an argument (let alone a proof) for the essential claim that this revelation, which only some enjoy,  justifies God in permitting moral evil (as well as the harms that follow).  As I've argued before, Ganagdean's book does no better in this respect--he asks rhetorically, "is it worth it?" And then takes for granted what the bible says about the matter which is question begging in the current context. Likewise, the theodicy fails to provide an argument for why God could not have achieved his end of revealing himself, without moral evil or at least without the harms that follow from moral evil in our world. Notice that God isn't supposed to be limited by the laws of nature or the causal regularities we find in our world--so for Gangadean's theodicy to have a leg to stand on, he's got to prove to us that it's logically or metaphysically impossible for God to reveal his nature without moral evil and the attendant harms that (as a matter of causal regularities) follow. A very tall order indeed.

Let me close by saying something about Gangadean's so called "ironic solution" to the problem of evil. Here is the argument.

The Ironic Solution:

(1) Because of all the evil in the world, I cannot see how it can be said that God is all good and powerful.  

(2) Because of all the unbelief in the world, I cannot see how it can be said that God is all good and powerful.   

(3) Because of all the unbelief in me, I cannot see how it can be said that God is all good and all powerful.  

(4) Because I have neglected and avoided the use of reason, I cannot see what is clear about God. 

Where's the irony? Well, the thought seems to be that if you assume (1), then it follows that (4), but since (4) is supposed to be an absurdity that gives you reason to deny (1). I hinted above that the argument takes many liberties about the nature of good, about what is clear and the like. Here's Gangadean's own words on the matter (lifted from his book).

The solution to the problem of evil has certain assumptions...that there is a clear general revelation that only some is eternal, that God the creator exists. It assumes clarity and inexcusability (113). 

The problem that I noted before is that it's clearly question begging in the current context. The problem of evil is a problem that aims to show that God cannot exist insofar as evil does (i.e., that there's a contradiction or tension between the thesis that evil exists and that God exists). But as Gangadean notes, this argument assumes that (among other things) "it's clear to reason that God exists." In other words, that there is a watertight proof for the existence of God so that it's impossible for God not to exist. That's just what (4) says. Of course, that's the very thing at issue! It's no good to answer the problem of evil with an argument that presupposes that it's clear to reason that God exists. If it's clear to reason that God exists, according to Gangadean that means it's impossible for God not to exist. But of course, the theist can't legitimately help herself to this claim because that's the very thing under dispute! In fact, if we allow Gangadean this assumption, then there really is no problem of evil or any other problem against theism, rendering the "ironic solution" entirely superfluous. Ironically, we now have a reductio against the purported reductio--an ironic problem for the ironic solution.