So the Party of Responsibility, as it always does, recently screwed up epically by putting Jeffrey Goldberg in its super-classified war room chat and sharing extremely classified war plans with him. As ever, the Party of Personal Responsibility then denied that they screwed up and even tried to blame the guy they incompetently included in the chat, leading to this burst of common sense from one of the many comedians whom God has fittingly made a prophet to speak truth to a cult of folly:
I am, you will not be surprised to hear, mortally sick of the Party of Personal Responsibility’s refusal to take responsibility for anything, ever.
But I should also note that there is another form of dodging responsibility that is not confined solely to that Cult. We homo sapiens have been pointing fingers at You Know Who ever since Adam blamed God (“The woman you gave me tempted me!”), Eve blamed the serpent, and the serpent–lacking fingers to point with–could only keep mum.
Here’s how we do it today: “If God is so good, why does he allow Hitler and Trump?”
It’s a common dodge in atheistic debates. But, of course, you have to pick a lane. If your case is that God does not exist, then it’s dumb to complain that he is evil. If your case is that God is evil, it’s dumb to argue that he does not exist. If your case is that good and evil are mere human constructs and that you are beyond all that, then it’s dumb to complain that Hitler and Trump are evil (which, in fact, they are, so your argument about being beyond all that is dumb.)
Me, I think it says everything that both Trump and Hitler were freely and democratically chosen by us. The real question we should be asking is “Why do we allow evil?” That God lets us have our way when we scream “Give us Barabbas!” is a mystery bound up with his willingness to let us see our own stupid, sinful faces in the mirror that we might finally understand our own capacity for sin and repent instead of blame him for our own dumb choices.
A friend of mine used to remark that all of human history was divisible into two phases:
1. “What could it hurt?”
Followed some time later by,
2. “How was I supposed to know?”
Or, as the kids today say, “FAFO”.
If you are going to demand that God give you freedom and let you take responsibility for your own life, then stop complaining for allowing the human race to freely choose Hitlers and Trumps. We did this. Us. Through our fault, through our fault, through our own most grievous fault.
Stop trying to pin the rap on God.
And that’s what Lent is all about, Charlie Brown.
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3 Responses
Unfortunately, I guess this is true 🙁 – for other people, you know, not me, right?!?
I think you’re off the mark here, Mark.
Atheists know where they stand on this issue: we’ve always said that its just humans all the way down. So when we ask questions like those related to “the problem of evil”, we’re challenging your worldview under your presumptions and your definitions about an omni-max deity, that is, one that is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-benevolent.
In a nutshell, the critique boils down to that if it is as the saying goes, that “with great power comes great responsibility”, then if you’re going to claim that someone has power over everything, then it logically follows that they’re responsible for everything that happens as well. The buck stops at the top.
I think root of the problem is that while the concept of an omni-max deity might work in the abstract, in order to make it the greatest possible entity that can be conceived of, the concept itself falls apart when you try to apply it in reality. At best, you can only realistically give God two out of three.
You can say that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, and that he’s allowing all kinds of evil as part of a greater plan to serve some inscrutable greater good. However, that would, by definition preclude God from being “all-benevolent”. There is a reason we don’t take the maxim of “the ends justify the means” as some paradigm of what it means to be “benevolent”.
You can say that God is all-knowing and all-benevolent, and that he knows and wants what is best for people but is restricted from acting himself for whatever reason, like for example, his inaction being a necessary component of free will. However, that would, by definition, preclude God from being “all-powerful”.
You can say that God is all-powerful and all-benevolent, and that each person can make their own choices without God knowing ahead of time what those are going to be. However, by definition, that would preclude God from being all-knowing.
And sure, you can chip away from those maximalist definitions in order to make those attributes of God seem more plausible, but now we’re no longer dealing with an omni-max God. But Christians cannot accept such a fact, even if that is what they’re actually doing in practice. Why? Because such a God, one that is no longer all-powerful, all-knowing or all-benevolent, can now be challenged, convinced or questioned. And the same thing would apply to those who proport to act as its proxy.
But I digress.
To circle back to the central point of the article, this is not an “atheist problem”. We’ve always been clear from the onset that this a human mess that was caused by humans and that only humans are to blame, and therefore, that its up to us humans to fix it.
If anything, its Christians who have to come around to our position on this issue, not the other way around.
This is a very thoughtful and honest perspective. A lot of what you’ve said resonates with me because I’ve struggled with these issues for a long time.
As a Christian, I can’t claim to have answers to these objections — and I agree that the problem of evil is probably the strongest challenge to belief in a God who is all-powerful, all-benevolent, etc.
To be honest I’ve often felt that the argument that God allows all kinds of evil as part of a greater plan to serve some unknown greater good (or quoting Romans 8:28) is a cop-out by Christians. It makes sense to us – the believer crowd – but it exasperates skeptics.
And I’ll honestly admit, arguments by Aquinas to address these go right over my head.
The only thing that’s ever really consoled me is something I once heard John Lennox say. I might be wrong here – but I think he openly admitted that the problem of evil can’t be answered very well. Instead, he says, “Is there anywhere any evidence that there is a God who understands it? And could help us to live with it? And you see it’s in the Christian message of the Cross that I see a God who’s not remained distant from human suffering, but has become part of it.”
I don’t think any other religion has a God who embraces pain, rejection, injustice, and death. All for our ultimate good.
You’re right – the buck stops at the top. But on Good Friday, it’s as if the top became the bottom.
So I suppose for us, the answer isn’t a tidy argument. Maybe it’s a story.
The Passion must be one of the strangest paradoxical stories ever told. An all-powerful God becomes weak. An all-knowing God is constantly misunderstood. An all-benevolent God sends his only beloved Son to be tortured and killed.
And then the resurrection turns everything on its head.
It’s like God is saying, “I won’t just permit suffering – I’ll suffer it with you and raise it all into something glorious.”
And I suppose for me, the buck stops here. And that’s really what keeps my faith alive.