The Food Chain and God: The Natural Evil of the World

A new page! "The Food Chain and God".

A good god could, if it wanted to, have designed all life so that it is directly sustained by manna from heaven, with no need for consumption of biological matter. But almost every form of life must by its very nature capture, kill and eat other living beings in order to survive. Without this murderous torment, life is impossible. If not by direct consumption, then, organisms must still acquire biological matter at the expense of others: the competition for food is also a case of living beings being required to outdo each other merely to survive. There is no way to live life along a principal of do no harm.

If life was created, and not simply the result of undirected unconscious evolution, this is surely the worst possible way to have created life. A god could not have created a more vicious cycle if it tried: tying the very existence of life with the necessary killing of other life is the work of an evil genius, not of an all-powerful and all-loving god. Either no god ever instigated life or guided it, or, such a god is monstrously evil.

The contents menu is:

1. The Arms Race: Poisons and Resistance
2. The Despair of Darwin
3. Non-Biological Energy and Balance

A few little updates to religion pages

• Monotheism and Free Will: God, Determinism and Fate - added a note on the contradiction between Omnipotence and Free Will (section #2), added a few more verses from Qur'an to the list of determinist verses, and re-ordered the page a little bit.

• Added section Atheism and Secularism #2. Lower-case or Upper-case Atheism? and commentary on the confused opinions of sociologist William Sims Bainbridge.

• The God of the Christian Bible is Evil: Evidence from Scripture and Nature - Added section "4. Sowing Seeds of Confusion - Not the Antics of a Good God" about Biblical statements on dreams, prophecies and the like and how they should be trusted, against the real-life situation that many conflicting religions and beliefs result from such visions. Also, the story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11 has God create all the conflicting languages of mankind, because otherwise "nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them".

And finally,

• Biblical Christianity Denies Free Will: I've added Matthew 5:45 to the section on predeterminism; although it isn't about salvation, it is at least about justice. The verses say that the sun and the rain afflict both the good and the evil amongst us. Also added a quote to section "4.5. The Church of England" from John William Draper (1881).

And in other news, I'm loving the summer heat even though it makes it harder to do my marathon training - mostly means I'm having to go running a bit later in the day than normal.

The Problem of Evil and Suffering: Can a Good God Exist?

I've redone "The Problem of Evil: Why Would a Good God Create Suffering?" by Vexen Crabtree (2011). It still opens with a list of all the main areas of the problem of evil (natural disasters, angels heaven, babies going to heaven). And a list of all the main theodocies used to try to explain why evil exists (free will, the absence of god, god testing us, etc). All these explanations do not answer the fundamental problem of evil, however.

The page contents:

1. Introduction: A Fundamental Contradiction Between a Good God and Reality
2. A Venn Diagram: Absolute Good vs. Apparent Evil
3. The Creator of the Worst of All Possible Worlds: Is God Evil?
4. Christianity
5. Conclusion

The Problem of Evil and Free Will

If God is all-powerful and all-good, it would have created a universe in the same way it created heaven: with free will for all, no suffering and no evil. But evil and suffering exist. Therefore God does not exist, is not all-powerful or is not benevolent (good). [...] A theodicy is an attempt to explain why a good god would have created evil and suffering.

The most common theodicy is the free will theodicy. This is that God created evil so that we could then choose between good and evil, and make moral choices. If all choices result in good, there would be no moral choices. If love is acceptable, it must be chosen over hate and therefore evil and suffering result when we make morally poor choices. However this classical theodicy does not hold up, for many reasons. Prominent historical Christian theologians who have rejected the free will theodicy include St Augustine, Martin Luther and John Calvin1. The arguments on this page are thousands of years old, but, many continue to believe in the simplicity of the free will theodicy, so, it does no harm to state the arguments against it again.

These are the menu headings on my page about the free will theodicy:

The contents of "Is Free Will the Reason God Allows Evil and Suffering?" by Vexen Crabtree (2003) is now:

1. Free Will Does Not Require the Existence of Evil
   1. There is Free Will in Heaven, But No Suffering
   2. Natural Evil is Not the Result of Free Will
   3. Why So Much Suffering?
   4. Why Do Bad Choices Of One Person Cause Suffering in Another?
   5. Choosing Different Good Courses of Action
   6. Evil Does Not Have to Cause Suffering
2. Conclusion: There are Multiple Reasons Why the Free Will Theodicy Fails