How Literature Solves the Problem of Evil

My new article on literature and the problem of evil is in the new CiRCE Magazine here. Here is an excerpt:

When people look for a solution to the problem of evil in its rational or logical form, they are looking for a resolution to a technical problem. But this question—the rational question of evil—is not the real problem of evil. At least it is not the question with which people who experience suffering actually struggle. In fact, the vast majority of those who actually struggle with evil couldn’t even tell you what the logical question was. And even if they were aware of the problem—and even if they knew the answer to it—they would not be satisfied.

How would the answer to a logical question assuage their grief? Their grief is not a logical problem. The logical dilemma of evil would not be satisfying to anyone but a logician—and it would only satisfy him as a logician; it would not satisfy him as a human being. 

The purely abstract philosophical problem of evil is an impersonal question. It is always someone else’s problem. But the real problem of evil and suffering—the existential problem—is necessarily a personal question. It is a problem for me. 

The philosophical question of evil is not the question parents and friends of those killed in Newtown or Japan or the twin towers asked themselves. It is certainly not the question addressed by God speaking from Job’s whirlwind. 

There is, in fact, not just one problem of evil: There are two. The first is the logical question, “How can there be evil and suffering in a world created by a good and all powerful God?” But the second question, which can often sound the same, is actually much different. The second question is “Why is evil happening to me?” This second question is not a logical question, but an existential question--or perhaps we might better say that it is a phenomenological question.
It is not a question about something that happens in the abstract, it is something that happens to us. 

In Job’s story, the characters do not make this distinction, but I think the author does. Certainly God does, as we see by the end of the story. Job is dealing (whether he knows it or not) with the second question—why is evil happening to me?—while his Comforters are dealing with the first question—“How can there be evil and suffering in a world created by a good and all powerful God?” Job’s question is concrete and existential, not abstract and philosophical. But his friends are all philosophers. Job himself seems unaware of this distinction—or maybe, to borrow a phrase from Chesterton, it was in his soul but not in his mind. In any case, this was part of his struggle, and this is the primary reason why the advice of his friends is not a help to him: He thinks they are addressing his question, when, in fact, they are not. 

While his Comforters bring him reasons, God brings the news of the poetic order of the world. God’s words mean more to Job than those of his comforters because the world is more like a poem than a syllogism.

Is there such a thing as natural selection?

Panda's Thumb put up a blog post with an interesting title a couple of weeks ago: "Natural selection reduced diversity on human Y chromosomes." Now I'm sure this is a very interesting article for other reasons, but I'm interested in the title of the article, which talks about "natural selection" "reducing" something in something else.

Natural selection, which is, apparently, some actual thing, is acting on some other thing. This brings up several questions having to do with ontological status of natural selection. What exactly is it? Is it some ghostly force? Is it a mechanism? How can it act on something else? In what way is it a subject that acts on other objects?

And this article title is hardly unique. Many scientists talk this way--in a way that reifies the abstractions they have themselves fashioned.

Now there seem to be two possible views here: First, there is the prescriptive view: that natural selection is a thing--it has some ontological status in the world and that it acts upon other things in the world. Second, and alternatively, there is the descriptive view: natural selection is not a thing in and of itself, but is rather a description of the way the world, in fact, behaves. Another way of putting it is that, under the prescriptive view, natural selection is something in the world, whereas under the descriptive view it is something in the mind of the scientist.

To talk about it in the way this article title does--and in the way many scientists do on many other occasions--assumes the first view. Do these people really believe that natural selection is a thing? Or is this just their careless way of speaking?

I imagine if you corner your scientific friend who speaks in this way, he will finally have to say that it is just a manner of speaking, in which case you can't really say that natural selection does anything.

Maybe, in regard to natural selection, it is just a way of speaking. But there is the same issue in regard to natural laws. Are they real in and of themselves? Do they have some prescriptive force on the things they are said to govern? Or are they simply descriptions constructed to fit a set of facts and events in the world?

I don't think it is too much to say that the general public thinks of things like natural selection and the law of, say, gravity, as things having prescriptive force. And it's partly due to the way scientists are always talking. I suspect that in this case there are more scientists who would take the prescriptive view. And this is certainly the way the layman thinks about scientific laws: that they govern things in the world, making them do this and that and prohibiting them from doing that and the other thing.

That is, after all, what laws in the real sense of laws--the things our legislatures pass--do: they govern things. They order this thing to happen and this other thing not to happen. The whole reason for calling regularities in nature laws is to produce this impression that there is something out there that makes things in nature act a particular way.

The prescriptive view of natural law is wholly unscientific. And by that I mean not that it violates any scientific principle (that would be positing a prescriptive law governing prescriptive laws), but that such a view lies outside the very purview of science. If scientists want to claim to be empirical, then they can't possibly believe in the prescriptive view because the prescriptive view is metaphysical. It is what the philosopher David Hume said about causation in general: it can never be arrived at by any empirical method: Nobody has ever seen a natural law. It is a metaphysical postulate that explains the way things happen. But it is wholly non-empirical.

This, in fact, is the whole objection to miracles: that they are claims that there are events that violate natural laws. The objection to miracles assumes the prescriptive view. And yet, I suspect that a number of the atheists out there who are always championing the integrity of science, and who would admit that, from an empirical standpoint, natural laws are merely descriptive, will turn right around and argue against the miraculous on the grounds that miracles violate prescriptive laws.

As Chesterton pointed out in his "Ethics of Elfland," the only way to view the world prescriptively is to view it as the result of prescriptive will. In fact will is the only thing that can really be prescriptive: It is the necessary condition for prescriptiveness. To use the term "law" in the context of science and then to deny that you are using it prescriptively is try to have your scientistic cake and eat it too. It's either careless or dishonest--or, perhaps more likely, thoughtless.

The way atheistic scientists talk is many times at odds with their stated positions. They say on the one hand that they are not engaging in metaphysics, but as soon as they say that, they render much of what they say unintelligible. Their very denials make gibberish of the truths they affirm.

It's one of the great ironies of the whole language of science and natural law (or for that matter natural selection) that it only makes sense from a position of theism.

Words that Should Be Banned: "Impactful"

I'm starting a new and occasional series of posts on this blog about words vying for legitimacy which should, on the contrary, be eliminated from the language as soon as possible. The need for this increases the more the cultural barbarians assert their new found influence.

George Orwell once pointed out that it is not only true that the decadence of our civilization has bad effects on language, but that decadent language has bad effects on culture:

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

In other words, saving language helps save civilization. So I have selected a word I heard just today, care of Michelle Obama, although it is hardly limited to the liberal lexicon. In fact, I just heard it the other day from a conservative radio talk show host. The word is ...

"Impactful."

Just typing it makes my cring. Here's the Urban Dictionary's entry on this "word" (which I place in quotation marks to underscore the tentative nature of its status as an actual word):

"Impactful": A non-existent word coined by corporate advertising, marketing and business drones to make their work sound far more useful, exciting and beneficial to humanity than it really is. This term is most frequently used in "team building" seminars and conferences in which said drones discuss the most effective ways to convince consumer zombies to purchase crap they clearly do not need or even want.

"Team building." Ugh. There's another one that needs to go.

When I hear a person use the term "impactful" my first thought is that he has read a few too many bureaucratic memos written by unimaginative people who, instead of reading competent literature, spend their time reading cheesy success books with titles like How to Maximize your Success Through Positive Habits. Or maybe that the person just doesn't read a all.

"Impactful" is a word created by taking a noun ("impact") and adding a suffix ("ful"), making it an adjective. This can work, but more often it does not. If you just don't have an ear for words (and anyone using a word like this is demonstrating that he doesn't), then ask yourself, "Does the expression that results from taking the word back apart and using it as a full expression sound right?" In other words, does it sound right to say, "full of impact"?

How can something be "full of impact"? By its very nature "impact" can only refer to the effect some one thing has on another. One thing "has an impact" on another. But nothing can be "full of impact" and therefore nothing can be "impactful."

Whenever the urge comes upon you to use this fake word, ask yourself whether there is not another word which expresses your thought better. I submit that there is no case in which another word, such as "effective," "meaningful," "constructive," or "significant" would not express the thought better. Oh, and don't replace it with "affecting," which is another word that needs to be banned.

Now that I have had to use this word several times, I feel like taking a shower. So if you'll excuse me...

Still Not Even Wrong: More on atheists conflicted about the falsifiability criterion for science

In a previous post, "Not Even Wrong," I pointed out that the belief that there is life on other planets is, in terms of Karl Popper's falsifiability criterion, no more scientific than belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The Peanut Gallery got all up in arms about it and generally missed the central point of my post.

And then there was P.Z. Myers, who does a great imitation of bull in a china shop, asserting that I am a creationist and that I was somehow defending the falsifiability criterion (which, ironically, I have called into question several times on this blog), talking down Popper's demarcation criterion.

And I now notice Sean Carroll has advocated the abandonment of the falsifiability criterion over at the Edge.

Funny how far down this test to tell the difference between science and non-science has come since the Dover v. Kitzmiller decision, which employed the criterion to determine that Intelligent Design was not science.

Ten dollars says these people still think the reasoning in the Dover decision was legitimate despite the fact that they have now reject the criterion employed in coming to it.

Oh, and don't miss Massimo Pugliucci (an atheist who actually knows what he's talking about on the philosophy of science) responding to Carroll here.

Here is an infographic on how the fifty states compare on various education measurements, mostly having to do with 8th grade. It is put out by Best Education Degrees and like all such measurements has to be taken with a grain of salt, since such measurements employ criteria that may or may not result in anything meaningful. But it is not surprising that my own state, Kentucky is in the bottom 2/5ths of most of these measurements:
Produced By Best Education Degrees HT: The Answer Sheet

Barack Obama's State of the Union Speech: A summary

President Barack Obama announced in his State of the Union Speech tonight that from now on everyone will get whatever they want whenever they want it, especially women, who will get even more, and everything will be better.

I don't know why no one has thought of this before.

The Facts of Life: The Wendy Davis debaucle

Wendy Davis, the Texas gubernatorial candidate who rose to fame for filibustering a bill in the Texas legislature that would have prevented abortions of viable unborn babies for eleven hours in tennis shoes has had a bad week. But it was even worse for her now embarrassed admirers.

Turns out her hard luck story about being a single mom raising her kids in a trailer park bore little resemblance to her real life in which she married a guy who took care of her kids for her while she took all expense paid leave from her family to get Harvard Law degree after which she dumped said guy the day after he finished paying off her school loans. As Ann Coulter put it:

The reason Wendy Davis' apocryphal story was impressive is that single mothers have to run a household, take care of kids and provide for a family all by themselves. But Wendy was neither supporting her kids, nor raising them. If someone else is taking care of your kids and paying your tuition, that's not amazing.

Apparently her pro-choice ideology doesn't translate well into campaign propaganda: You can't choose the facts of your past.

Memo to Davis Supporters: Bad things can happen when you champion someone for supporting late-term abortions.

NEWS: Bureau for Better Atheists Sanctions P.Z. Myers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 22, 2014

The Bureau for Better Atheists (BBA) today sanctioned Internet atheist P.Z. Myers for doing exactly what he was criticizing the BBA's Martin Cothran for in a post on the belief that there is life on other planets. "This is just the kind of atheist we have to deal with on an almost daily basis," said Martin Cothran, spokesman for the group. "Our goal is to improve the low quality of atheists so that we can have an intelligent argument with them. Myers, needless to say, has remained impervious to improvement."

The BBA has had to put Myers on probation before for what it called "sheer boneheadedness," but today's formal censure came after Myers got several things completely wrong in his attack on this post today in which he charges Cothran with getting several things completely wrong.

Cothran's post had simply applied the most common criterion used by atheist scientists to demarcate science from non-science, and pointed out that, under this criterion, the belief that there is life elsewhere in the universe is no more falsifiable than belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a satirical fiction developed by atheists scientists to discredit belief in God.

Cothran pointed out that Myers' post was titled: "It takes a creationist to pack so much wrong in so little space" despite the fact that Cothran is not a creationist. Then, in his opening paragraph Myers says:

Apparently, Martin Cothran believes that there is no life elsewhere in the universe, and that this unimaginably vast emptiness is evidence that a god created us. I don’t understand the logic, but then I don’t understand most of his weird leaps in this post on how life on other planets is like believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

But that was not Cothran's argument. "Nowhere in the post did I say that there was no life on other planets, which is why, in our censure, we recommended that Myers find an English interpreter." Cothran's argument was not that the belief that there was life on other planets was wrong, only that it it didn't meet the falsifiability criterion and that, if that was the case, then under that criterion it had no more claim to be science than believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

"Myers not only got my position on creationism wrong--as well as my position on life on other planets--he also somehow got the idea that I was in favor of Popper's falsifiability criterion when, in fact, the whole reason for making my remarks was that I don't believe the falsifiability critierion is a proper method of demarcation." Cothran said that Myers "disagrees with all the things I didn't say, and, agrees with the things I did say but hasn't figured out I said."

He said the fact that Myers actually agrees with him on this issue has caused him to go back and reassess it just to make sure he right, but only after, he said, "I've had a strong drink."

###

Not Even Wrong: How the belief that there is life on other planets is like believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster

P.Z. Myers has blogged on this post and, as usual, botched the job. My response is here.

There many scientists who believe that there is life elsewhere in the universe, and they seem to think that this belief is a scientific belief. But if you think about the criterion many scientists employ to determine what is and isn't science, you begin to wonder.

We are told by many New Atheist scientists in particular (who like to mark their territory, but, fortunately in a way slightly different than, say, cats) that a belief can only be scientific if it is falsifiable. This is their demarcation criterion of choice and they use it to ruthlessly guard the borders of science. This is one of the reasons, they say, we must reject Intelligent Design. This idea comes generally from Karl Popper, a philosopher, who said that a theory cannot be considered scientific merely because it admits of possible verification, but only if it admits of possible falsification.

It is this general idea that is behind Richard Dawkin's "Flying Spaghetti Monster." The Flying Spaghetti Monster, says Dawkins, exists just outside the range of the most powerful telescopes and the more powerful the telescopes, the further away the monster gets so that we are never able to actually detect him. There is therefore, no way in which belief in him may be disproven.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is Dawkin's send-up of the belief in a theistic God, belief in Whom has the same status as his imaginary monster: there is no evidence that can possibly count against his existence. God can never be disproven.

Okay, now take the belief that life exists somewhere else in the universe. This is a common belief among atheist scientists. In fact, Dawkin's himself conjectured that life on earth may have come from other planets. But how can that belief possibly be falsified?

There is a possibility that, if true, it can be proven true simply by finding it somewhere in our outside our own solar system. But if it is false, how could we ever know that it was false? If it was false and the universe were infinite, as many scientists believe, then would could never know it to be false even theoretically. And if it was false but the universe was finite, there is no practical way we could ever know it to be false even though it is theoretically possible--although there is some question whether it is even theoretically possible for humans to investigate a universe as massive as we know ours to be.

Even in this latter case of a finite universe theism would be less problematic since a theist could simply say "Well, we will find out after we die." And since everyone will certainly die, at least he has that to go on.

So there you have it. Belief in extra-terrestrial life. The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Theoretically indistinguishable. And taking this into consideration, how is believing in God any more or less scientific that believing there is life on other planets?

Let's see what the Peanut Gallery has to say about this one.

Diane Ravitch savages Common Core

Education historian Diane Ravitch savaged the Common Core Standards at last week's meeting of the Modern Language Association. I don't agree with everything she said, but 90 percent of it is absolutely right. Kentucky even gets an ignominious mention:

The Common Core standards were written in 2009 under the aegis of several D.C.-based organizations: the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve. The development process was led behind closed doors by a small organization called Student Achievement Partners, headed by David Coleman. The writing group of 27 contained few educators, but a significant number of representatives of the testing industry. From the outset, the Common Core standards were marked by the absence of public participation, transparency, or educator participation. In a democracy, transparency is crucial, because transparency and openness builds trust. Those crucial ingredients were lacking.

... Some states—like Kentucky–adopted the Common Core standards sight unseen. Some—like Texas—refused to adopt them sight unseen. Some—like Massachusetts—adopted them even though their own standards were demonstrably better and had been proven over time.

Read the rest here.

Gay rights laws anything but tolerant

Below is the text of an opinion piece that was published in the Danville Advocate-Messenger, my local paper:

A law that violates the First Amendment right to freedom of religious exercise is not “fair” and a law that effectively brands half the community as bigots because of their sincerely-held religious beliefs is not “inclusive.” Yet these things are precisely what a gay rights ordinance currently being discussed by the Danville City Council.

 On Dec. 9, the City Council heard testimony for and against a gay rights ordinance, an ordinance which has not yet been written, but which promises to in some way mirror similar ordinances passed in a few other Kentucky cities which typically purport to prohibit discrimination on the basis of “sexual identity” in housing, public accommodations, and employment. Federal and State laws already exist to prohibit discrimination."

 The first question to ask about such an ordinance is whether it is even needed. How many complaints have been made? If there have been complaints, are they increasing or decreasing?

These are important questions since such a law would probably require a new bureaucracy to handle complaints (if there really were any), since state government doesn’t provide assistance in such cases. According to city’s attorney, the ordinance would result in “the largest expansion of municipal government since Planning and Zoning.” If government is going to be expanded to this extent—and taxpayers are going to be forced to foot the bill—there should be a compelling reason to do so.

In fact, gay rights laws do little to diminish discrimination against gays precisely because so many people are already opposed to it. Being gay is not only celebrated in our news media, but rewarded with benefits by government and many businesses.

The second question has to do with how such an ordinance would affect churches and other religion-based institutions--as well as Christian business owners. Typically such laws exempt churches, but not other organizations or individuals.

Would Danville Christian School be required to violate its stated principles in order to comply with the law? What about Sunrise Children’s Homes, which has similar restrictions because of its Christian mission? What about Boy Scout troops in the area which are not allowed to hire gay scoutmasters?

In fact, how would this affect a male who wants to rent or sublet a room in his house or apartment, but only to another male? Wouldn’t a female who was rejected because she was the wrong gender be able to bring a lawsuit for discrimination on the basis of “gender identity”?

In Oregon, a Christian bakery owner lost his business because he declined to bake a wedding cake for a gay wedding. In Lexington, Kentucky a t-shirt company refused to print a t-shirt promoting a gay rights event because of the owner’s Christian convictions and was hauled before the city’s Human Rights Commission, which is now investigating his business. In New Mexico a court ordered a Christian photographer to cover a gay wedding at a church despite his religious misgivings. In what other circumstance would a court ever legally require someone to go to church?

One supporter of the measure at last week’s City Council meeting said he thought churches should be exempt because of Constitutional rights, but not other organizations or individuals. He was a minister. Why should this minister’s church be exempt from a law he wants everyone else to follow?

Gay rights laws that exempt churches effectively assume that First Amendment religious freedoms apply only to churches. But the First Amendment does not apply only to churches: It also applies to individuals. No reputable legal scholar holds the position that the First Amendment applies only to institutions.

 People who hold to faith traditions that proscribe certain kinds of sexual practices should not be derided for what they believe—or for acting on those beliefs. And they should certainly not let those who advocate tolerance impose a law on them that is anything but tolerant.

I will be speaking on Common Core at tomorrow morning's meeting of the Fayette County Republican Party

I will be speaking at tomorrow morning's meeting of the Fayette County Republican Party on the Common Core Initiative. It begins at 9:30 at the Inn on Broadway.