The Argument from Unnecessary Suffering

 Christians have a tendency to claim their god is perfect. They describe Him as being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. The “argument from evil” [1] says that given the way the world is, God cannot be that way. The first and still the most succinct form of that argument goes back to Epicurus (340-279 BCE). Here is his argument:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence comes evil? Is he neither willing nor able? Then why call him God?”

Theists have developed “sophisticated” responses to the argument. These arguments mainly fall into the category that “evil” has some secondary gain to it. One argument is that the human traits which produce evil (wanton cruelty, egoism, hatred etc.) are an innate part of humanity. You can’t have humans without those qualities, therefore God could not have made humans without evil. I don’t find this very convincing. Name any act of evil you can think of. If someone didn’t commit it would that person not be human? I think the answer is clearly that person would still retain his/her humanness. If that is so, then there is no act of evil that is an innate part of humanity. Nor does this apologetic apply to natural evils like hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.

But by far the most popular defense against the argument of evil is “free will” argument. Free will can lead to both good and evil. In the world, the good outweighs the evil. Since you can’t have free will without the potential for evil and if evil comes of it it is due to humanity not to God. So God cannot be held accountable for that.

I find the power of these arguments lie in the murkiness of their assumptions. Free will cannot be operationally defined. It is something that we all feel like we have, but since we do not have access to another person’s feelings we can never be sure that others actually have it or not. As neuroscience progresses we now know we cannot be assured that WE have it either. Just because we feel like we do, does not mean we actually due. Our behavior results from the actions of neurons and neurons act by inanimate ions crossing their membranes. They either produce an action potential or not and this is based solely on the laws of physics. If at the moment of decision and you could split the universe into any number of identical universes then the person making that decision would have their neurons subject to the same laws of physics and the ions crossing the membrane would do exactly the same thing. The person would make the same decision in every universe. [S]he would experience the same doubts, the same evaluation process (ie the same things that give rise to the feeling of free will), and would come to the same decision every time.

But in any case, this is all a distraction. Theists do not recognize the bind they put themselves into by positing an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God. To illustrate this I have put my own spin on the argument. I call it the argument from unnecessary suffering. The argument deals with suffering, not evil directly. It also makes an operational definition of free will less important. It puts the onus on the person who claims that free will is the “greater good” that results from the suffering to show how free will (a) would disappear if the suffering were prevented and (b) that free will couldn’t have been maintained with less suffering.

First, let’s put forth some definitions:

(1) Omnipotence: having the ability to do anything that is logically possible to do. I use the term “logically possible” to exclude simplistic arguments like if God were omnipotent then he should be able to make a rock so big that even he cannot move it; but if he cannot move it then he can’t be omnipotent. It is simply not logically possible to have both an immovable object and an irresistible force.

(2) Omniscient: knowing everything that is logically possible to know. Again, I used the term “logically possible” to exclude arguments that miss the point I am trying to make. For instance, in quantum physics there is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which says that particles can have entangled properties (position and speed for example) which have a degree of uncertainty to them. The more you know about the position of a particle the less you know about its speed and vice versa. So it is not logically possible to know both of those things.

(3) Omnibenevolence: Desiring the best possible outcome for everything in the universe.

(4) Omnimax: Having the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence.

(4) Unnecessary Suffering: ANY suffering beyond a minimal amount necessary to achieve a secondary greater good. This allows one to postulate that suffering may lead to a greater good, but if God is as theists say He must not produce suffering beyond the least possible to achieve that goal.

Here are the premises:

P1: An omniscient God would know that unnecessary suffering exists.

P2: An omnipotent God would be able to prevent it.

P3: An omnibenevolent God would want to prevent it

P4: Unnecessary suffering exist

Here is the conclusion from the premises:

C: If there was an omnimax God then there would be no unnecessary suffering. Since it does there cannot be an omnimax God.

This is a valid logical argument. The conclusion is derived directly from the premises. But logically valid is not the same as logically true. For an argument to be logically true, all the premises must be true. P1, P2, and P3 are true because they come directly from the definition of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. P4 is an assertion. So IF you are going to argue that this argument is not logically true, your only course of action is to argue that P4 is not true. Or, in other words, you have to argue that in reality there is no unnecessary suffering. All suffering that has ever existed was no more than the minimal amount to achieve some secondary gain … free will or anything else you might want to propose as the secondary gain.

But what does that entail? Suppose you hear on the news about a child being kidnapped, tortured for weeks, then killed. If there is no unnecessary suffering you must think that HAD to take place in exactly that way AND that the world is a better place for it. Good luck trying to tell that to the grieving parents. They would think you a heartless piece of shit … and I would agree with them.

You would have to think that the 6,000,000 Jews killed in the holocaust had to die in the way they did for the world to be as good as it is now. That if 5,999,999 Jews had died whatever secondary gains came out of it would not have been achieved. Not only that but the Jews had to have died the way they did. Kids sucking up the Zyklon B into their lungs in a last ditch desperate act to simply breath. If even one had died in a less painful way then the secondary gain would not have been achieved.

In 2004, a tsunami started on the west coast of Indonesia killed 230,000 people. Not a one of those deaths was connected with anyone’s free will. Not a one of those deaths were due to some necessary inherent human characteristic. What secondary gains were achieved by this? What would have stopped those secondary gains from being achieved if only 229,999 people had died?

Several years ago, Texas had a severe drought. In the midst of it I walked a trail in a nearby state park. The trail had a blackish tint to it that I had not noticed before. That tint was due to dead ants … thousands if not millions of them. They died from the heat and dehydration. That was suffering. What secondary gains justify that? If they needed to die couldn’t they have died in less gruesome manner?

My assertion is that there is so much suffering in the world, it is ridiculous and irresponsible to think all of leads to a secondary gain that justifies it. It is beyond reasonable doubt that at least some of the suffering that happens is unnecessary. I would go so far as to say that the vast majority of it does not lead any secondary gains that would justify it. And if that is true, then God cannot be omnimax.

It should be noted that this argument does not disprove the existence of a god, just the existence of an omnimax god. But don’t stop there. Consider the significance of that. Does God not know that there is unnecessary suffering? Then He isn’t omniscient. If He isn’t omniscient and doesn’t know about all the unnecessary suffering that goes on in the world, what else does He not know?

Is God unable to stop unnecessary suffering? The he is not omnipotent. If he doesn’t have the power to stop a single ant from suffering, what else does he not have the power to do? It certainly seems to me it would be easier to stop an ant from suffering than to cure cancer. So why are you praying for just that?

Does God not care that unnecessary suffering exist? The he is malevolent. What else does he not care about? If he doesn’t care about the 230,000 people who died in tsunami, why should he care about you?

Any way you look at it … God comes across as not such a good guy. Perhaps this can best explained by postulating that God doesn’t exist at all.

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FOOTNOTES

[1] See Wikipedia entry on PROBLEM OF EVIL for a short discussion on the history.

Purpose of the Blog

 I had been planning my retirement ever since I turned 62. That was 8 years ago. My biggest concern was that I wanted to do something meaningful … at least meaningful to me. I was employed by a medical school and worked in community health centers as an optometrist. But in addition to my doctorate in optometry (OD) I also had a doctorate in neuroscience (PhD). Science had been my first love so I had planned to go back to those roots. I wanted to do a science-related project. After thinking about it I thought a viable project would be to work with with insects. There are a whole lot of them. They are easily found around home. My plan was to catalog the diversity around my house and see how that diversity changed over time. I set about reading up on insects and became able to identify most species around the house. For long-legged flies I could only go down to the family level. But I was generally satisfied with my progress there.

Last year was a tough year. COVID-19 dominated … everybody I think. I worked through the epidemic but I noticed that when I came home I was really tired. I went to work earlier than my wife and I came home earlier as well … usually a couple of hours earlier. I found that I spent a large portion of that time sleeping on the couch because I felt so tired. I put that down as being due to my age and the stress of COVID-19. I was approaching 70 and decided that the first of the year 2021 was the time to retire.

It came and I wanted to start my project. However, I was out of shape badly. I thought exercise would do it so I set up a walking program. But it didn’t help at all. In fact, I found that the more exercise I did, my tolerance for it decreased. I went from being able to walk a mile with a great deal of effort to huffing and puffing after only a couple of hundred yards. What was going on?

Then one night I had to get up to use the bathroom (a common occurrence at my age). But when I came back to bed I couldn’t seem to get my breath. I had to sit up in bed taking deep breaths for about 10 minutes before I finally went back to normal. I scheduled an appointment with my primary care physician (PCP). It was in March and COVID restrictions were still in place so it took a week or so to get an appointment. A day or so before the appointment I had another episode of shortness of breath. I was walking around in the house to get a little bit of exercise. I became light-headed and had to sit down. It took another 10 minutes of deep breathing to get back to normal. In neither of the two episodes had I felt any chest pain and I did return to normal.

My PCP did an in office EKG on me. She said it was normal, but she wanted me to have an echocardiogram done which would give me more information. The full EKG report was posted on my electronic medical record that I could read and I found that the EKG was not exactly normal. I had a mild right bundle branch block (RBBB). What this meant was that electrical signal that coordinated the beating of my heart was taking slightly longer than normal to traverse the cells on the right side of my heart. I lot of people have this and live normal lives but in some unfortunate people it could lead to atrial fibrillation in which my atria wouldn’t be synchronized with my ventricles. The EKG showed that there was a one-for-one beat of my atria and ventricles; which is probably the reason my PCP hadn’t mentioned it.

It was two weeks before I could be scheduled for the echocardiogram. When I finally took it the echocardiogram showed that the right side of my heart wasn’t functioning quite normally. The ejection fraction (the percentage of blood in my right ventricle that was being ejected with each ventricular contraction) was borderline normal, but the biggest thing was that it measured the pressure in my pulmonary artery as 60mmHg. That’s high. Anything over 40 is a sign of heart failure. So I was given a referral to a cardiologist. It was another 2 weeks before I could get an appointment with one. Fortunately, I live in a suburb of Houston, TX. Houston has the world’s largest medical center. I was scheduled with a cardiology group that was set up by Michael DeBakey (if you don’t know who he was … google him). The cardiologist was very nice. He did another EKG which clearly showed the RBBB. He also scheduled me for a cardiac CT scan which he said would give us more information. The plan was that depending upon the result of the CT scan, he was likely going to recommend a cardiac catherterization procedure to fully check me out.

It took another week before I could get the CT scan. It turned out that the cardiac catherterization wasn’t needed. The CT clearly showed the problem. I had a huge pulmonary embolism. That is a blood clot that developed (as we were to later show) in my left leg, broke off went through my heart and lodged in the pulmonary artery. The embolism was what was called a “saddle embolism”. Shortly after leaving the heart the pulmonary artery splits into two. One branch goes to the left lung and another goes to the right lung. A saddle embolism sits at that point of bifurcation and has a part that goes into both pulmonary arteries.

The CT was supposed to take about an hour or less. I had expected to go home. I didn’t. I was immediately hospitalized and put on heparin (an intravenous blood-thinner) to prevent further clotting. Once in my room the cardiologist came to visit me. There was a computer in the room and he was able to show me the CT scan that diagnosed it. I’m not a cardiologist and I haven’t really looked at CT scan of the heart and lungs before. But I could clearly see the embolism. As he showed me different levels of the scan I thought one of the major branches was 100% blocked. But as he kept going it appeared to me the other one was 100% blocked as well. That’s not good. If both were a 100% blocked then how was my blood being oxygenated?

So I asked. I said to him … “I’m not an expert on reading these things, but it certainly looks to me like both pulmonary arteries appear 100% blocked. Is that true?” And his reply was, “Sure looks that way. I haven’t seen very many that bad.” I was out of the hospital bed standing by the computer while he was telling me this. I felt a little tired but I didn’t feel bad. To paraphrase Rene DesCartes: I think, therefore I am … pretty sure my blood was getting through my lungs and being oxygenated somehow.

I asked how that could be with a scan like that, and the cardiologist thought I might have developed collateral pathways around the block to get blood into the lungs. He certainly knows more about the heart than I do, but I have a problem with that explanations The pulmonary artery branches not too long after it exits the heart. Collateral vessels would have to form before that branch. There isn’t that much room for collaterals to develop and the CT didn’t show any. My own hypothesis is that the “clot” must have not been solid. Blood could ooze through it like it does through gauze. Enough blood was oozing through to supply oxygen to my body when I wasn’t physically active but not enough when I exerted myself even a little bit. The reason for the pulmonary hypertension was that the right ventricle was pumping against that clot.

I was referred to a cardiovascular surgeon, who took me to the operating room for a thrombectomy. In this procedure a cannula was inserted into my femoral vein and weaved through my heart and out the right ventricle to the site of the clot. Bits and pieces of the clot were sucked out. They couldn’t get it all but they did open up both pulmonary arteries (although some major branches within each lung were still clogged.

A hematologist did some tests to determine what was causing my blood to clot. One of the possibilities is that cancers can cause hypercoagulation syndromes. It it was cancer then the usual blood-thinner prescribed for most people nowadays (Eliquis) wouldn’t work for me and I would have be put on Warfrin. But, no cancer was found. Five full days later the IV heparin was removed, I was placed on Eliquis and sent home.

While I can now do more, I still have problems. (1) I have a shitload of doctor appointments to follow up (we still don’t know what caused my blood to clot in the first place; (2) The Eliquis has made me a functioning hemophiliac. While cutting onions for dinner I knicked myself with a knife. That cut continued to bleed for a week; (3) I’m trying to improve my stamina by walking, but I have osteoarthritis in my right hip. I can now walk a mile but my hip hurts after that. I can’t take NSAIDs (such as aspirin) because of the added effect to the blood-thinners.

So … in short, I’m thinking my health may not allow me to do the science project I had planned to do. I am thinking I need an alternate project. Here is what I am thinking:

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 caught me totally off-guard. How could such an obviously second rate con-man get himself elected President of the most powerful, technologically-advanced country in the world. His one term in office did nothing to improve my opinion of him … yet millions (74 million to be precise) still supported him in 2020.

Prior to Trump’s election I had a Facebook account but never used it. I was Facebook-friends with some of people I had long-since lost contact with from high school. High school for me was in the western mountains of rural North Carolina … prime Trump country. So I started to pay attention to Facebook in an effort to understand what these people saw in him. I was appalled. I and they (the ones who strongly supported Trump) lived in totally different bubbles. We no longer thought the same way. My science training had taught me to check things out; they would accept anything that portrayed Trump in a favorable light and reject anything that cast aspersions upon him. I tried my best to see their point but in the end I failed. Trump played to their fears … undocumented immigrants were just a bunch of murderers who came over here to sell drugs to our children; our traditional European allies were actually just cheating and taking advantage of us at every turn; Russia never meddled in the 2016 election and the Mueller Report proves it; Mainstream media lies and everybody knows it; Trump built up the best economy the world has ever seen;  Trump is strong on defense and supports the Constitution and the rule of law; Trump stands up for the “little guy”; He supports “family values”; Just think how bad COVID-19 would have been if there had been a Democrat in the White House; Trump won the 2020 election but the Democrats stole if from him, etc. I don’t think ANY of that is true. I don’t think any of that stands up to even cursory scrutiny. But all it took for these people to believe it is for someone … virtually anybody; no other qualifications necessary … to say it and they would believe it.

Humans have the unique capacity to think and analyze things. My scientific training has made such things routine for me. I’m certainly not always right, but if a belief is important to me, I always try to have reasons for believing it AND reasons for believing that alternative explanations are not true. It seems to me that Trump’s election was because we do not live up to our unique potential to think clearly. I think Trump-like politicians are the biggest threat to our democracy we have faced since the Civil War. The only antidote to them is to improve our ability to analyze reality.

So a project I can do that may give my retirement years some meaning is to encourage analytical thinking. We all live in the real world. By the real world, I mean a world in which reality exists. But reality is oftentimes hard to assess. Reality doesn’t care what you want it to be. It doesn’t care what you fear it to be. But it is our wants and fears that are our biggest obstacles in determining what reality really is. I think we function best when our actual perceptions of the world fall in line with the reality. We cannot solve problems if we’re absolutely wrong about what the underlying causes of them are.

I have been thinking about turning this blog that takes on what I think is the most pervasive thing in society that we have wrong. And I think that is religion. I’m an atheist and have been since my high-school days. But it was after Graduate School that I really looked into the evidence behind the belief. Since I live in the United States, Christianity is the religion that most affects my life and thus is the specific religion I am most familiar with. But the arguments I will make on this blog can be models against most other religions as well.

Religiosity is well-ingrained in society. We put a lot of importance in it. It is encouraged by the government. Churches are tax-exempt institutions. We put religious mottos on our currency. We make references to God in our pledge of allegiance. No open atheist could be elected to a major office in this country. People attribute the blessings of God for any good fortune that comes their way. They take comfort in times of stress in their faith. Some people do wonderful acts of charity in religion’s name. Some claim that religious conversion has been a great force for them to change their lives for the better. Many see religion as the ultimate source of meaning in their life. 

With all the good things mentioned in the previous paragraph one can reasonably ask why would anyone want to change all of that. I think the biggest reason is that it is wrong, and ultimately obviously wrong. Wrong beliefs in the long run do not make the world better. The world is faced with challenges and acceptance of wrong beliefs will at some point lead to wrong solutions to these challenges. I don’t think it is a coincidence that 85% of white evangelicals supported Trump. I think their religious beliefs contributed (and still does) to their inability to see Trump’s obvious political manipulation of them. I don’t think it is a coincident that the vast majority of white supremacists claim biblical justification for their views. I think their religiosity enables them to dismiss their abhorrent racial ideas because they see themselves as doing God’s work. I don’t think it is a coincidence that virtually all the opposition to abortion rights is rooted in religion. I don’t think it is a coincidence that virtually all resistance to teaching the well-established scientific principles of evolution in schools is rooted in religion. I don’t think it is a coincidence that pastors and priests are among the most successful child molesters. I think the value we place on religion gives them a cover not afforded to other of their ilk. I do not think it is a coincidence that the Bible Belt in the United States also has the lowest levels of education and the highest levels of smoking, teen pregnancy, gun violence, and poverty. I think religious beliefs promote these social concerns. 

Religion is a huge institution. Any huge institution has it upsides. But with religion I think all the upsides of religion can be had without the religion. People who used religion as a motivator to become better people could have become those better people if only they would have realized that the things they did to become better people would have worked whether religion motivated or not. People who do great works of charity in the name of religion could have done the same great works of charity without the religion. People who find solace in religion at times of great stress could have found the same solace if they had developed close interpersonal ties with friends and family. I have found meaning in the work have done and in the relationships I have developed. Religion was not required.

Huge institutions have their downsides as well. Religion is unique in that it is the very basis for many instances of the downsides. A more accurate view of reality can lead to insights on how to mitigate or eliminate these downsides.

As stated earlier, religion is well-entrenched in society. No single argument will displace it. It will take many. But I think the preponderance of the evidence is there. There is a lot of it. Most of what I will say has been known for hundreds or in some cases thousands of years, but it is not common knowledge. I don’t think that is coincidence either. Information such as textual criticism of the Bible has been actively suppressed. Pastors who are well aware of the problems do not discuss them with their parishioners. Motivated reasoning has been used to dismiss many arguments. Intentional logical tangents are thrown in to mislead. Undue credence in ad hoc arguments also a problem. But overall the preponderance of the evidence is quite clear … there is no evidence of a god that is the basis for morality; who intervenes on the behalf of worshipers; who has a personal message for worshipers; who will award worshipers with eternal life. There is no evidence that we have an eternal soul. The evidence might not be what you want, but in the end it is better live with reality.

I would like this to be an on-going project for the rest of my life. I am thinking that no essay I write is the final one until I am no longer capable of writing. I hope that eventually there will be people who read and comment on these essays. I am much more interested in people who disagree. Those are the people who will force me to sharpen and clarify them. I will read all comments carefully. If I think the comment warrants a rebuttal I plan to edit the post appropriately and thank the commenter.