“4-year-old girl gang raped…”; “7-year-old stepson is beaten to death…”; “Thousands face starvation amid racial-purge turmoil in Africa…”
Are we not sick to our stomach when we see those headlines and read the victims’ stories? Doesn’t something reach deep down and tear up your soul (whatever that means)? Doesn’t even the question — “Hey God, how come you didn’t do anything to stop this massacre?” — pop into your mind?
Atheists are generally content with simply debunking the positive proofs that theists put up to prove God, and I must say I agree. The burden of proof is with theists. However, not being content, atheists do put up positive proofs of their own to disprove God’s existence. One such proof is commonly referred to as “The Problem of Evil”. It is along the lines of “If God were to exist, would He permit as much evil in this world as there is today?”
In this volume, I examine this atheist’s challenge and prove that this challenge does not have merit. I have come to realize that while atheists have put up effective responses to theists proofs, this particular problem of evil does not constitute positive proof that God does not exist.
My response to this challenge comes along two different paths—“the rising sensitivities” and “the necessity of evil”—that converge at some point. Let’s go down one path at a time.
The first path is somewhat obvious to most of us. Most of us intuitively answer this with “…that depends on the definition of evil.” For example, a few thousands of years ago, it would have been perfectly natural to engage in cannibalism. Only a couple of millennia back, it was socially acceptable to throw a man into cage filled with hungry lions and have thousands of people watch and cheer as the lions tear the man apart before devouring him. Today, both of those extreme examples are unheard of. What changed? People, in my opinion, are becoming more and more ‘sensitive’ as generations pass and become more ‘sophisticated’. Why, even just a hundred years ago, we had generations of bonded slavery, and today in most of the civilized world that would be completely unacceptable.
For all we know, what we today consider to be acceptable, such as boxing, hanging as capital punishment, etc. would all shock our future generations. I can certain imagine a thousand years hence a Doctorate student of Sociology submitting a thesis paper on the fascinating subject of “barbaric ritual of boxing through the early 21st century”!! So, as we continue to evolve and make what we call ‘scientific and social progress’ and remove much of the ‘barbaric practices’, other forms of behavior take on that mantle.
Where am I going with all of this? Let’s for now park this path, and explore the other one—“the necessity of evil,” which I think is the more philosophically-rich of my two counter-arguments.
Now, imagine you are seeing a red cloth. Did you ever ask yourself how do you know it is red in color? I am not looking for the scientific explanation here (about white light, color absorption, optical nerve, synapses, cognitive pattern recognition, etc.). Nor does it have to do with basic definition (‘this’ is what I define as red, and hence this is, by definition, red). I am asking something slightly more deep. How do you it’s the color red?
Actually, part of the reason you notice the red color is that you know it’s not yellow or blue or white or black or any of the hundreds of colors the human eye is able to discern. In other words, you know all these other colors and you know what you are seeing now is not one of them, but instead is red.
It is the same thing with the smell of moist soil on a spring morning after a rainy night or the taste of coffee or the sound of a drum. You recognize each of these sensations precisely because you know other smells, tastes, and sounds. How about other non-sensory feelings? It’s the same thing. Each feeling has siblings that we are aware of. You know both love and hate; gentleness/rudeness; hard/soft; happy/sad; and so on and so forth.
In fact, can you name a single ‘thing’ that does not have corollary siblings (or an opposite)? Pause and think about it. Think hard to see if you can come up with anything. You cannot.
But the interesting question is how much is this a function of the entity versus a limitation of our ability to sense such information?
Before we continue and get ahead of ourselves, let’s define some terms: an entity is something that could be either an event or a living being or non-living object in the past, present or future. Such an entity has several attributes or properties. Each attribute of a particular entity has one value at a given time. Let’s put this in simple terms. Roses, sofas, planes, earth, clouds, wine, etc. are all entities. They all have multiple attributes such as smell, color, softness, bloom quality, shape, taste, etc. The same attribute can belong to multiple entities and vice-versa (an entity can have multiple attributes). So, it’s a many-to-many relationship between entities and attributes. Each attribute has several possible values. For example, the color attribute has several possible values, such as pink or yellow or red or a mixture.
So, back to our discussion above: the question I was exploring was, and now put in slightly more formal language using our definitions above, can there exist an attribute whose universe (set) of possible values is only one? To that end, I was asking how much is that a function of us versus the universe of entities that possess that attribute.
“If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one around, does it still make a sound?” This is a well-known proverb/philosophical-riddle (from Chinese?). It’s actually quite deep. Our intuitive answer may be an obvious ‘yes’; but on cogitating this a little further, the answer may not be so obvious after all. We can say with some measure of confidence that if a tree falls in a forest, and whether or not there are people around, it creates vibrations in the surrounding air medium. And we can say this since we have observed millions of times that those vibrations are created and there is no convincing reason why it wouldn’t repeat when there are no people around (refer to the “law of conservation of belief” that we discussed in the first volume). So, while it’s not 100% guaranteed, we can say with a high degree of confidence that those vibrations are created in the air medium surrounding the falling tree in the deserted forest.
However, we can equally confidently say that there is NO sound created as a result of that falling!! How? Because in order for there to be sound, a living being capable of sensing those vibrations and converting them into a audio input to the brain has to be present. After all, what is sound, if not a perception by a human or some such living being? In order for there to be a perception, just an event or an entity is not sufficient, there has to be a perceiver as well. A perception can exist only at the intersection of an entity and a perceiver.
So, to repeat, the shape of world is something like this: there are bunch of entities; and there are a bunch of attributes. Each attribute can take on several values. And there is a many-to-many relationship between the entities and attributes—i.e., an entity can take on many attributes and the same attribute can be attached to multiple entities.
Now, my contention is that an attribute can exist in our (‘our’ meaning ‘our human-perceived’) universe only if we are able perceive more than one possible value for it. It has nothing to do, in my humble opinion, with the entity that’s being defined. In fact for all we know, a rose could have other attributes that a visiting alien might be able to perceive. We are limited to our five senses, but what if the alien has other forms of sensory perception? What if the rose is emitting a ‘thought’ or something else that we are not able to sense because we don’t have the sensory organs to detect such an emission?
This actually brings me to one of my pet peeves. We all used to learn when we were kids that water has no taste and air has no smell, etc. What a load of crap! How do we know that water has no taste? In fact, water or, for that matter, anything else has no taste by itself. It’s a reflection of how we, as humans, sense it. It could be that water tastes like coffee to an alien; or even at our earthly level, do we know for a fact that a horse (or some other earth-bound creature) also does not feel the taste of water? Do we know for a fact that for that creature, water actually tastes salty? We don’t. It’s arrogant to say that water has no taste. It would be more precise to say that water has no taste for humans and that air has no smell for humans. But of course, the trouble with that approach is that everything is a function of human perception. As such, if we follow the above principle, every one of our statements has to begin or end with the phrase ‘for humans’, which is truly irritating. So, let’s accept that we don’t need to add this phrase to everything we describe about the universe, but let’s not forget the fact that every one of those observations is true with respect to a human perception only.
So, back to our original example, we know the color red because we know (or are aware of) other colors such as blue, grey, brown, etc. Same thing with other senses as well—smell, sound, touch, and taste. Just to ponder: do you know what it feels like to be you? I don’t want an elaborate description about your feelings, personal philosophy, political thoughts, etc. Just see if you can find a single word to describe your whole you—your thoughts, character, personality, beliefs, etc. You can’t. I can’t. And no one else in this world can either. And the reason is that the ‘feeling of you’ is an attribute for which there is only one possible perceived value as far we are concerned—“you.” You can’t sense what it is to be me and vice versa. You can only sense yourself. As such, the word to describe the ‘feeling of you’ does not even exist in our awareness and, as an extension, is not present in any of our languages.
Another point to ponder: we all know that we can only detect a change in perception of smell, taste, and touch. If you are left in a room full of roses, after a while, you can’t smell the roses. There’s a physiological explanation for this as well. You can only feel something if a different smell enters the room. It’s the same thing with taste and touch. In fact, that’s the explanation for why we feel that water has no taste and that air has no smell. It’s because air is ubiquitous that we can’t smell it. Similarly, water or saliva constantly on our tongues has saturated our sensory cells such that when drink water, our tongues don’t register the water. So, something else to think about is if the whole universe had a constant audible hum about it, would we even have a word for it? We all know that there is microwave radiation that permeates the entire observable universe, but it’s beyond our auditory range and so can’t hear it. But I am talking about a hum that’s within our hearing range—would we still register it and would we have had a word to describe it in our language? Why would we? It is part of the world in which we’d be born, it’s something we’ll talk on top of and communicate with each other; we wouldn’t be aware of a world without that hum. In such a mindset, would we have had a word for it? I don’t know.
Anyway, let’s go back to our very first genesis of this discussion: the necessity for evil. Using the just-discussed logic, can one recognize happiness without sadness to go along and provide us with the necessary contrast to make that cognition? Can we have goodness if we don’t also have evil in this world? I humbly submit that it’s not possible. In order for us to recognize ‘God’s goodness’ or ‘God-given happiness’, it is logically necessary for there to be evil and sadness in this world. Otherwise, there would be an attribute with only a single value like ‘goodness’, which as we observed above, renders the attribute as non-cognizant to us humans.
Let’s now tie back this line of thought of the necessity for evil with the first line of thought, the rising sensitivities, and see how we can merge them together.
Through either method, we’ve seen that evil must exist, because it’s just a perception of the perceiver. Even if God were to remove all those that we today perceive as evil, by the principle of rising sensitivities, other things will take on the mantle of ‘evil’, and it will continue to exist, albeit in a morphed form. Equally, as a form of perception, evil must exist in order for there to be a sense of goodness.
But let’s just for the sake of exploration assume a world where God listens to us and starts to remove whatever we define as evil. How would that go? First, we’ll ask Him to remove the obvious candidates—killing of the innocent, child abuse, famine, disease, etc. Let’s say a thousand or even five thousand years pass hence, by which time all memory of a world where those existed are gone. They may exist as historical records, but that’s it. No one will know what it felt to have those ‘evils’. What then? A person will then ask ‘How come God allows poverty?’. So, God removes Poverty.
Then, another five thousand years pass. Will not a person who poses the same challenge of evil not say ‘hey, if there does exist a God, how could he permit a world where there are people with disabilities?’? S/he will absolute say so and her/his peers will acknowledge as those being evil, because by that time, the definition of evil will change, people will become more sensitive, and things that we today consider to be mundane will all of a sudden take on a new meaning and be considered evil.
So, what does God do again? He blesses all of us to be free of all disabilities. Another five thousand years pass. Then, the definition of evil will change to the inequity in mental prowess. How can God, in all His Goodness, give someone lower intelligence? God removes that as well. We become more sensitive as a species. The evil definition changes again—from skin color to physical prowess to life expectancy to whatever-we-hold-in-high-esteem-that-we-perceive-differences-among-people. This need not be restricted to humans only. Conceivably, the same logic can then extend to animals, plants, insects, and to the whole ecosystem for which we develop feelings and sentiments. This cycle of defining-evil --> God removing that evil --> Human redefining evil --> God’s removal will continue as long as people continue to see differences between themselves and others.
So, when will it all stop? It will stop when one stops seeing differences between oneself and the rest of the world. It will stop when we see ourselves in others and we see others in ourselves. But, hey, wait a minute, don’t we already know this? Isn’t this just a different way of saying aham brahmasmi, the age-old Sanskrit philosophical adage, which means “I am Brahman”, Brahman here indicating God?
The so-called problem of evil will continue to exist so long as we see us as being unique and distinct from the rest of the universe. The moment we perceive it all as being the same, emanating the same Om, things fall immediately into place. Everything becomes nothing, and that nothingness is the essence of Brahman.
May be, the aham brahmasmi is just a way of a wise sage thousands of years ago summarizing all of this 4-page essay. May be, pithy was the rule of the day those ages, and that wise sage made that saying as a way of addressing what we today call the problem of evil. May be. Who knows?
All I know is that the atheist’s challenge via the problem of evil is not valid. Evil must exist in order to provide the necessary contrast to see goodness. God may not exist, but atheists have to offer other proofs to prove so.
