God: Fact or Fiction
Benjamin Fuller
Intro to Ethics: Good and Evil
Section: 7
28 November 2012
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The universe and life as we know it only began once, and people have had trouble
understanding the reality that we exist in, therefore people have come up with many ways to
rationalize with themselves as to how it all came to be and what it means. The existence of God
is one of the main explanations as to how it all happened, although this does not sit well with
everyone. I will be laying out the main arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as
the main critiques, followed up with how my beliefs fit into the picture.
Our world is filled with a myriad of instances in which evil and suffering are prevalent.
There is moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is described as mans injustice to man and natural
evil is suffering that is brought on by injustices in nature.
If God were truly an all-perfect God, (omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent, or the
3-O’s) then He would be aware, have the power, and want to do something about these evils,
which brings up the logical problem of evil. If God really does exist then we would live in a
world without evil.
So we must first look at the idea of logically possible worlds. To clarify a logically
impossible world would be that in which we have square-circles, or married bachelors. With this
we can look at the fact that a perfect God with evil would be logically impossible, in the sense
that we have evil in this world and the two do not cohere. On these grounds, a truly rational
person would not believe in the existence of God.
Although C.S. Lewis offers his theodicy, “The Free Will Response.” Basically Lewis
says that a perfect God will do what is best for us, which is to create humans that have free will.
This puts humans at fault for evil and takes the guilt off of God for not intervening. It would be a
contradiction for God to force us to love him, and to force us to do good, because he knows this
would not be what is ultimately best. Free will is what drives us to make the decisions that we
do, which makes for a more perfect world. Therefore, God cannot be held responsible for the
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existence of evil, nor can He be guilty for allowing it. While Lewis’s theodicy doesn’t
necessarily cover everything, Alvin Platinga offers his defense.
Platinga says that we can live in a logically possible world where evil does exist. His
defense states that God would have created creatures that have free will, and with this these
creatures would be able to misuse their free will without God intervening. For God to intervene
he would be taking away our free will. Therefore it would be logically possible for God to create
a world in which evil exists. Furthermore he explains natural evil, by saying that we could live in
a world in which there are “fallen angles” or evil demons that are the root of natural evil.
William Rowe provides us with two examples of moral and natural evil: a 5 year old girl
was raped, severely beaten over most of her body and strangled by her mother’s boyfriend, and
the example of a fawn being burned in a forest fire and dying a slow painful death.i I will refer to
these two examples as E1 and E2. These are an example of the Evidential Problem of Evil,
which basically entails that (1), no intrinsic good that we know of justifies a perfect (3-O) God in
allowing E1 or E2. From this we can infer that (2) there is probably no intrinsic good that exists
that permits for a perfect God to justify allowing E1 and E2 to happen. Therefore, God probably
does not exist.
Gratuitous evils like these examples that seem to not be necessary, but still exist, hold a
strong argument against the existence of God. The inference that there is no greater good that
comes from E1 or E2 is purely out of ignorance. This is considered to be a no-seeum inference.
There are logical and illogical no-seeum inferences. A logical example would be not
being able to see bacteria on a Petri dish but still knowing that it’s there. An illogical example
would be inferring that there are no bugs on the ground as you look from the top of a five-story
building. The inference that there is no good that comes from E1 or E2 is a prime example of an
illogical no-seeum inference. Simply because we don’t know of any intrinsic good that comes
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from these evils does not cohere with the second part of the premise, because we are in no place
to try and comprehend God’s knowledge of the greater good. While the conclusion could be true,
it does not follow from its premises. There could be an intrinsic good that comes from E1 or E2,
of which we are simply unaware, so that the truth of the conclusion is independent of the truth of
the premises—making it a non sequitur.
“Something had to make the Big Bang happen… something outside of nature, a
supernatural, noncontingent, being that exists from itself,”ii Timothy Keller offers a strong
argument for the existence of God. In his book The God Delusion he talks about the “FineTuning Argument.” This is essentially that the universe was prepared for human beings.iii Francis
Collins states that if the gravitational constant, among 15 others, were off by even one part in a
million million, the universe would not be life inclusive.iv There is so much design that is
apparent in our world that you could make the logical inference that there is a designer. It is
nearly impossible for human beings to rationalize with themselves that something came from
nothing, let alone without a creator. Explanations have to stop somewhere, which makes the
existence of God a very strong explanation for the “Fine-Tuning Argument.”
Richard Dawkins wants to provide his own response to this argument firstly by saying
that “any God capable of designing a universe... tuned to lead to our evolution... needs a bigger
explanation than the one he is supposed to provide.”v With this he offers a possible explanation
which is the ‘mutiverse’ or that we live among trillions of other universes. This is where the
anthropic principle states that we would have to exist in one of those universes, and that by
chance we landed in a universe in which the 15 constants have been precisely tuned so that it
lead to our eventual evolution.
The moral argument for the existence of God holds strong ground. Essentially theists say
that firstly, if God doesn’t exist then objective moral values don’t exist, but that objective moral
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values do exist, so therefore God does exist. This means that morality exists beyond us.
Naturalistic Evolution has risen as a primary argument. The idea that morality is a
byproduct of the evolutionary process, as Keller puts it, “An individual’s self-sacrificing,
altruistic behavior toward his or her blood kin might result in a greater survival rate… therefore
resulting in a greater number of descendents with that person’s genetic material.”vi This stems
from the idea that we have no foundation as to whether or not our beliefs are true, simply as long
as your belief gets you to do the right thing to survive. The example is that if we lived as hive
bees, which have a completely different moral outlook than human beings, where the mothers
kill their fertile daughters and the girls kill their brothers, which leads to the bee’s ultimate
survival. This shows that naturalistic evolution is not grounds for objective moral truth, because
what might be right for our ultimate survival might not necessarily be the most morally good or
correct action.
I am fully aware that we live in a world where evil does exist, but at the same time I do
believe in God. Socrates referred to himself as a philosophical midwife, in the sense that he
probed people to bring the truth out from within. I believe that God acts in a similar manner. He
didn’t want to hand everything to us on a silver platter, as in not allowing evil, and having
objective moral truth. He knew that it would be best to give us everything essential to be able to
survive and prosper, this allowed us to be able to figure out how to act in a way that would
enable us to get past the obstacles and questions that we face. In the end He knew that this would
be best, that we would evolve into much stronger and more intelligent beings. With good will
being one of the main things that He granted, being omniscient, He knew that we would be able
to use this free will in a beneficial way, so that different species could survive and prosper. There
is no objective truth, just the truth we are able to use to our advantage to survive. Although,
while there may be some instances where it appears that gratuitous evil seems to be a
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byproduct of free will, we are viewing this at an epistemic distance and are completely unable to
comprehend the complexity behind certain actions that take place. All of this leads to the
explanation as to how the world came to be, God designed a world perfectly suited for us to be
able to grow and evolve in.
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Work Cited
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Print.
Keller, Timothy J. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York:
Dutton, 2008. Print.
Rowe, William L., and Nick Trakakis. William L. Rowe on Philosophy of Religion:
Selected Writings. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007. Print.
Notes
Rowe, William L., Nick Trakakis, William L. Rowe on Philosophy of Religion: Selected Writings. Aldershot, England:
Ashgate, 2007, Print. 122.
ii Keller, Timothy J. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York: Dutton, 2008. Print. 129.
iii Keller, Timothy J. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York: Dutton, 2008. Print. 130.
iv Keller, Timothy J. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York: Dutton, 2008. Print. 130.
v Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Print. 176.
vi Keller, Timothy J. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York: Dutton, 2008. Print. 148.
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