Let\u2019s return to Rev Sam\u2019s response to the problem of evil. To most of us, many theists included, the problem of evil looks like a very serious problem indeed for theism. Indeed, to me, it looks fatal to belief in a good, or worship-worthy, god.<\/p>\n
Now Rev Sam\u2019s response is to suggest that it isn\u2019t such an insurmountable problem after all. The problem is figuring out exactly what Sam\u2019s response to the problem amounts to. So far, my impression is that he\u2019s got two key responses.<\/p>\n
The first is to say that \u201cGod exists\u201d etc. is not used propositionally:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the biggest difference is that you see religious beliefs as abstract and propositional, whereas I see them as gaining sense from what they do in the context of a life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The other is to say (about my point that a God who, say, buries thousands of children alive, and unleashes literally unimaginable horror on sentient creatures over hundreds of millions of years, is surely not worthy of worship):<\/p>\n \u201cI suspect the logic of worship works the other way around anyhow – it is good to worship God, _then_ we talk about the ‘goodness’ of God, or not.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n These are very, very vague claims. How do they help as a response to the problem of evil? Sam doesn\u2019t explain. As per usual, he makes us do all the work for him.<\/span> We are forced to ask: \u201cSo Sam, do you mean this, or that? If you mean this, then there\u2019s this problem; if you mean that, there\u2019s this other problem.\u201d<\/p>\n If Sam recognises we have a valid objection to something, he can say \u201cOh, that\u2019s not quite what I meant\u201d or \u201cBut I also meant this too\u2026\u201d and so on. In this way, Sam can keep us tied up in knots forever.<\/p>\n Now, can Sam successfully defend the reasonableness (or whatever) of what he believes by means of this strategy? No, of course not.<\/p>\n Here, in a nutshell, is the problem for Sam. On the face of it, the problem of evil is a very powerful argument against what he believes. So the onus is on HIM to explain CLEARLY why it is NOT the problem we (and indeed even many theists<\/span>) take it to be. He has never done that. Until he does, it is his position that stands discredited, not mine.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, we might offer to do some of the work for him, so far as explaining what he means is concerned.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at the first suggestion again:<\/p>\n \u201cI think the biggest difference is that you see religious beliefs as abstract and propositional, whereas I see them as gaining sense from what they do in the context of a life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This points very vaguely at Wittgenstein on “forms of life”, and perhaps also at expressivism, etc. Let\u2019s look at expressivism a moment.<\/p>\n Perhaps the best-known expressivist theory is the \u201cBoo-hoorah theory (emotivism) in ethics. It says that when we say \u201cX is morally good\u201d or \u201cY is morally bad\u201d we are not making a claim<\/span>. Rather we are expressing an attitide<\/span>, a bit like going \u201cHoorah for X\u201d and \u201cBoo to Y\u201d. As \u201cHoorah to X\u201d makes not claim, it is incapable of being true or false<\/span>.<\/p>\n Of course, \u201cX is good\u201d looks like \u201cTed is tall\u201d. Now the latter sentence does make a claim, and is thus capable of being true or false (it will be true if Ted is, as a matter of fact, tall). But the former makes no claim, and so truth and falsehood do not apply.<\/p>\n Overlook this difference in the way the sentences are used, however, and you may start looking for the \u201cmoral fact\u201d that makes the former sentence true, and then become philosophically baffled by your inability to find it. “If you find yourself baffled in that way”, says the emotivist, “what you need is some linguistic therapy<\/span>. You need to look at how the sentence is actually used<\/span>, in its appropriate context.”.<\/p>\n We might give a similar expressivist account of religious language. It is used, we may say, not to make claims, but to express certain attitudes towards life, etc. “God exists” may, in effect express something like “Life – wow!” (or no doubt something much more complex and subtle). As such, it puts forward no claim (or, as Sam puts it, proposition).<\/p>\n But if that’s correct, then \u201cGod exists\u201d is also incapable of being true or false. In which case, it does not require some “God fact” to make it “true” (notice how this fits with Sam’s insistence that :<\/p>\n “I would deny that the statement ‘God exists’ is expressing a claim about a matter of fact in the world.”<\/span><\/p>\n ) And, (and here’s the relevant bit) if “God exists” is neither true nor false, it cannot be shown to be false, or probably false, by, say, empirical evidence.<\/span> Problem of evil solved!<\/p>\n Now, this expressivist account of how “God exists” functions might be the sort of thing Sam means, or it might not. I kind of doubt it is, though.<\/p>\n The expressivist view makes religious \u201cbelief\u201d amount to little more than a sophisticated way of expressing an attitude. There\u2019s no claim being made with which we can disagree (though we might still question the appropriateness of the attitude).<\/p>\n Yet, despite denying \u201cGod exists\u201d is propositional, Sam clearly does<\/span> want to be able to say contentful things about God, such as that \u201cGod is worthy of worship\u201d, etc. etc. He surely sees our dispute over whether “God exists” to boil down to rather more than just what sort of attitudes he and I hold towards life, etc.<\/p>\n There seems to be a muddle in Sam’s thinking here, in fact. Yes, you can immunize any belief, such as \u201cGod exists\u201d, against being falsified by the evidence (such as the problem of evil) by saying that the sentence expresses nothing more than an attitude (even if a very complex one). But the price you pay for avoiding the problem of evil in this manner is that, when the critic has gone away, you can\u2019t then consistently start saying the kind of things Sam clearly wants to say about God.<\/p>\n So Sam \u2013 what\u2019s your position? My guess is you’ll now say “Oh no – that’s not quite what I meant.” So what do you mean, then?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s return to Rev Sam\u2019s response to the problem of evil. To most of us, many theists included, the problem of evil looks like a very serious problem indeed for theism. Indeed, to me, it looks fatal to belief in a good, or worship-worthy, god. Now Rev Sam\u2019s response is to suggest that it isn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-problem-of-evil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}