In the most recent thread about the ontolotical argument (more precisely, it is about the modal ontological proof), Ludovic brought something up:
I think this is an excellent point, and in the past, I’ve not addressed it simply because it distracts from any discussion of the MOP itself. But I think this is a good time, since by and large most people are pretty well set on what they think about the MOP, to open a discussion about this other point in particular. Given that God is proved to exist, is He as evil as He is good?
The premise is simple, and Ludovic has outlined it cogently. If God indeed exists necessarily, then all existence is in fact contingent on His. No one will deny that evil exists. Therefore, evil exists because God does. There is no escaping the fact that that indicts God as not only the Creator of evil, but the Sustainer of it.
Since the debate about the MOP is headed in its umpteenth circle, I think it’s a good time to discuss something that is at the root of practically all philosophy, both theological and non; namely, the debate between existentialism and essentialism — because, honestly, there is no philosophical controversy that cannot be traced to this: which came first, existence or essence? It is one thing to prove the existence of God as a being so supreme that He cannot not exist, but what is His essence?
Getting back to our argument that God must sustain evil, I stated one premise almost as an after-thought. Very few people these days, because of the pervasiveness and profound influence of existentialism, would even have paused at the statement, “No one will deny that evil exists”. Certainly, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and most theists of almost every stripe believe that it does. So do most materialists, for that matter — particularly hard atheists. After all, many use the existence of evil as an argument that God does not exist, at least not a perfectly good God.
At the core of the dispute surrounding the title of this thread is whether evil does exist. And as far as I am concerned, if it does, then God cannot be good. Fortunately for me, I suppose, I am most persuaded by the argument that it does not. But then, I’m not an existentialist. See, the thing is this: by refusing to take as axiomatic that existence preceeds essence, I am not required to acknowledge the existence of something whose essence I can perceive. Despite that, I AM required to acknowledge that that essence, though nonexistent, is perceivable by things (like me) that do exist.
Before you shut me down and declare that this is yet another one of those weird things that Lib goes on about, please consider that exactly what I’m describing is quite commonplace, even given today’s utter saturation of existentialism. People still define, classify, and examine things in essentialist terms and with essentialist views. Science especially.
Science doesn’t really dwell much on the ontological aspect of things. It doesn’t wonder whether things exist; it just examines things that are there — like light, and gravity, and evolution. And when it does this, it is making a decidedly anti-existentialist (or essentialist) commitment. It studies light. Electromagnetism. It doesn’t study darkness. It studies heavenly bodies. Mass. It doesn’t study empty space. (In fact, it has determined that there might not be any.) And it studies evolution. Natural selection. It doesn’t study what is NOT at work driving the ascent of species; it studies what IS at work. Science acknowledges that a thing — like darkness, or nothingness, or emptiness — can have essence while not itself existing. Wherever there is the oscillation of energy, there is light. Wherever there is not, there is darkness.
The question, then, is whether evil can successfully be defined this way, and I believe it can. And I don’t mean anything so cheesy as “the absence of goodness” although, in the end, that’s what it will boil down to. I mean that a logically consistent case can be made that goodness exists but that evil has only essence. In fact, I believe that it must be made and that the alternative makes no sense. But the point cannot be made so bluntly and a priori because it might not be clear at face value whether even the essence of evil is logically allowable in the context of not only a good God, but an omnibenevolent one. (At last, an omni-word for those who have demanded it.)
For examining something like this, I like the scientific, or inductive approach. We really can’t say that darkness is a nonexistent thing with only essence until we actually understand the nature of light. It isn’t until we attenuate our perception of light that a right perception of darkness arises. Once we know that light is the oscillation of energy (and please, however oversimplified that phrase might be, that’s the gist of it and it is sufficient for our discussion), then we appreciate that there is no such thing as the oscillation of nothing. Darkness does not arise because of subatomic particles emitting darktons. Darkness arises because of insufficient light. The essence of light preceded the existence of light. There had to be a principle by which light could arise before it did indeed arise. And science is in the process of studying that phenomenon. Although we do not know the cause of quantum fluctuations and the collapse of electron clouds (or even if there IS a cause), we do know what happens. The modus tollens applies here: if these fluctuations did not happen, there would be no light.
Since we’re talking about an allegedly omnibenevolent God, it seems to me that the place we ought to start looking is morality — specifically, goodness. The definition is critical here, just as it is with light. If light were just the absence of darkness, we would demand to examine the darktons and to do double-split experiments with whatever it is that oscillates to produce darkness. It makes sense to me to posit the essence of an omnibenevolent God as being, well, benevolence. Goodness. That means that, were there no goodness, there would be no God. For whoever is willing to examine this question, it is necessary to be willing to accept that, given sufficient reason, it must be conceded that there is no God.
So, what is goodness? Based on what we’ve just said, it seems to me that goodness is an aesthetic. It is something that is VALUED by God. It is something that is so essential to Him that His own existence, though contingent on nothing ontologically, is impossible without it. Inasmuch as Ludivic has kindly granted that God indeed exists (at least for purposes of this discussion) necessarily, we don’t have to concern ourselves with whether He might not. And since He does, so does goodness. That is, if He exists and values goodness above all else, then goodness must also exist — otherwise, there is nothing to value.
Now, we have that goodness exists and is an aesthetic. So what is evil? In the spirit of covering our bases as we said before, and not leaving loose ends, it’s important to discuss goodness just a bit more before discussing evil. Knowing that light is a photon is nice, but without knowing how that photon arises, we really can’t say much about darkness other than that it is the absence of light. In that same way, it is important to know why goodness is so valuable and how it is manifested into existence.
Strangely, perhaps, not a whole lot has been written in philosophy about aesthetics. With the notable exception of Schopenhauer and a couple of others, it has always taken a back seat to its cousins, metaphysics and ethics. But an aesthetic can be something so galvanizing that otherwise reasonable people are moved to utterly unreasonable behavior. Falling head over heels in love with that special person so much so that you lose all sense of time and space. Reading that poem or that verse that so inspires you that your whole life changes in the blink of an eye. Even little tiny aesthetics can have a profound effect. A certain scent that brings memories rushing through the brain. A painting that makes you gasp.
One reason a lot of philosophers have shied away from serious treatments of aesthetics is that it is enormously subjective, and philosophers since Aristotle have prized precision and reasonableness. But aesthetics doesn’t lend itself so well to that sort of examination. Nevertheless, its influence is so great that Schopenauer was moved to posit a ubiquitous and horrible Will whose sole purpose is to ensure our misery, from which, only aesthetics can give us temporary relief. Nietzsche took this even further, and posited reality itself as a terrible joke — an illusion. Hegel, possibly the last great essentialist before the arrival of Plantinga, almost seems to have given up, by relegating aesthetics to the clinically noncomittal status of being on every level nothing more than the interpretation of “the Symbol”.
But the fact is that what most of us live for is our aesthetics. What concerns us is what makes us happy. (This includes people who, like Schopenhauer, aren’t happy unless they’re miserable.) Whatever it is that people pursue — wealth, soulmates, work, debate on the SDMB — they do it because it makes them happy. (That doesn’t necessarily mean that obtaining that which they pursue will keep them happy. Some people just like the pursuit itself.) We make our choices based on what we think will make us happy. (There are lots of interesting asides here, like the Buddhist notion that desire is the source of misery.) And despite that not much is written about the topic directly, our aesthetics permeate and govern our lives. Crimes are defined by them. Criminals molest kids or rape women or murder their spouses because they believe they will be happier when they do. Relationships are defined by them. Attraction is a prerequisite to romantic communication. Without droning on forever about it, suffice it to say that what an aesthetic DOES is make someone happy.
So, what is it about goodness that makes God happy? That’s actually a pretty easy question to answer, since the context is clearly morality and God is benevolent. Goodness morally edifies. Just as energy builds a universe, goodness builds a moral context. If you think of the universe as a probability distribution, you can think of morality as an ethical distribution. But there is an essential difference — the probability distribution is entirely objective, and the ethical distribution is entirely subjective. In other words, the particles will do what they may, whereas the moral fiber will be woven in whatever way moral agents weave them. There is nothing guiding the universe to some compelling purpose; but morality clearly is driven by the will of those who exercise it. Without man’s perception of ethics, the universe in and of itself is amoral. Not immoral. Amoral in the sense of being unconcerned with morality. Atoms are neither good nor evil.
Because goodness is an aesthetic, because it morally edifies, and because it is subjectively evaluated, it is necessary that an agent must be free to decide for himself its exact aesthetic value. It cannot be forced upon someone because then it would contravene the whole point of an aesthetic. You might like asparagus, but shoving it down my throat and telling me how great it is will not convert me to your point of view. Free will is a necessary component for honest aesthetic evaluation.
But how is goodness conveyed and perceived? Just as the senses perceive the universe, there must be some way for goodness to be perceived. And just as fields provide a mechanism by which the energy that the universe is made of moves from place to place, so must there be a mechanism by which goodness moves from agent to agent. I call the sense that perceives goodness “truth”, and I call the mechanism by which goodness is conveyed “love”. Thus, when one moral agent shares the aesthetic, goodness, with another moral agent, it is an act of love. There are many analogies in everyday life. It is quite typical that the only thing that makes you happier than your favorite aesthetic is sharing that happiness with someone else who values it as much as you. People like to share what they believe is beautiful. Love is the mechanism by which goodness is shared with others who value goodness. Truth is the means by which they recognize what they perceive.
And now we can talk about evil. If love is the conduit of goodness, then it makes sense to me to call the obstruction of goodness “sin”. That means that love and sin are opposites. Clearly, nothing I’m writing here is necessarily the viewpoint of mainstream Christianity or the politicians of Christendom. But I don’t claim they are, so that’s beside the point. I’m not talking about sin in the conventional sense of disobeying proscribed rules. I’m talking about sin in the sense of making a moral decision to obstruct the facilitation of God’s most valued aesthetic. There is nothing in this that declares, for example, that homosexuality is a sin. As a matter of fact, homosexual acts can be the most loving of acts whenever they serve to facilitate moral edification. Sin is a moral decision, just as love is. God, as a morally perfect being, always decides freely to love. Not because He has to, but because He wants to — He greatly values goodness. He values it above all else.
Now, with all this contextualized, it is easy to see how evil can be said not to exist at all. Just as opaque walls can obstruct light such that a room is completely dark, so can moral decisions obstruct goodness such that a heart is completely evil. If God were the only free moral agent, we could pin evil on Him. But since we are empowered agents whose free will is not trumped even by His own, and since He does not sin, the problem of evil falls squarely on us. Were we all always to edify one another and to facilitate goodness, there would be no evil. And since love is the activity of a moral agent, goodness is that which exists and evil is merely that which is absent wherever goodness abides.
That’s how I see it. And that’s why I do not believe that God and evil co-exist. Only one of them exists. The other is merely the essence of moral emptiness.
