Are Christians Evil?

One of my favorite philosophers is David Lewis. Lewis, who died in 2001, was a professor at Princeton renowned for defending strange and unconventional positions in metaphysics such as his belief that our world is but one of many worlds, all of which are equally real. He exemplified the playful cleverness that I admire in philosophers.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see that the December 2007 issue of the magazine Harper's has an excerpt from an essay entitled "Divine Evil" based on an outline Lewis wrote shortly before his death. The essay has been published in the book Philosophers without Gods (Oxford University Press, 2007).

The excerpt presents an argument that tries to show that most, if not all, of us are evil. It seems to go something like this:

(1) Anyone who admires someone who is evil is evil.
(2) It is evil to torment people for insubordination.
(3) The greater the torment prescribed for insubordination, the greater is the evil of the one prescribing the torment.
(4) God prescribes infinite torment for insubordination.
(5) Therefore, God is the most evil being. (follows from 2, 3, and 4)
(6) Anyone who admires God is evil. (follows from 1 and 5)
(7) All Christians admire God.
(8) Therefore, all Christians are evil. (follows from 6 and 7)
(9) All who admire people who admire evil beings are themselves evil.
(10) Almost everyone admires some Christian.
(11) Almost everyone is evil. (follows from 9 and 10)

Lewis uses the example of Fritz, the nice Nazi who admires Hitler. Clearly, Hitler is evil, and presumably we would judge people who admire Hitler, even if they themselves do not torment anyone, to be evil as well. But Hitler never sent anyone to eternal damnation in hell, so God is even worse than Hitler and anyone who follows God is worse than Fritz.

This argument seems to fail on a number of grounds, but I'll present one possible response right now and leave the rest to you.

Leaving aside universalists (who believe that everyone is saved), most Christians do believe that at least some people are eternally damned. But does that necessarily make God evil? Lewis seems to assume that we should assess the morality of a being based on the quantity or quality of the pain and suffering they inflict or allow. But that ignores the fact that people like Hitler and Stalin are limited in their ability to inflict suffering not by moral considerations but by their practical inability to inflict all the suffering they want to inflict. The question we need to ask is how much would such evil men do if they had the power of God? Compared to them, God is probably amazingly merciful. Any human in God's role would probably be much more petty and vindictive. So perhaps what is admirable about God is that given His infinite power, His mercy is beyond anything that humans are capable of.

Dead Sea Scrolls Lecture on Thursday

Dr. Sharon Mattila, Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Berry, will present a lecture on The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Archaeological Site of Qumran on Thursday November 8 at 7:00pm in the Science Auditorium. Dr. Mattila will discuss the site, the scrolls, and the people responsible for both. Cultural events credit is available. If you'd like to know more about the lecture you can contact Dr. Mattila at smattila@berry.edu.

Interfaith Discussion on Mideast Peace

The Religion and Philosophy Department together with the Interfaith Council and Evans Speakers Series are hosting a presentation and panel discussion on religious resources for peace in the Middle East on Thursday November 1. The presentation and discussion will be held in Evans Auditorium from 5:00 to 7:00. The main speakers are Dr. Ibrahim Abu-Rabi, Professor of Islamic Studies at Hartford Theological Seminary, and Dr. Samuel Fleischacker, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Philosophy Earns Prize (kind of)

Philosophy Club Vice President, Charlie Beaucham, took up the challenge by Peer Educators to illustrate his natural high and wound up with the first place ribbon. His depiction of Neitzche's famous words to "Live Dangerously!" has drawn hundreds to the love and lifelong pursuit of philosophy. Administrators were bowled over by requests and have themselves registered for spring classes taught by philosophical giants Papazian, McKenzie, and Kennedy. Many in the Evans school have offered their classrooms in honor of the burgeoning department, leaving palms and offerings at office doors. Bill Wilker, club officer and resident strong man, is not surprised, saying "it was only a matter of time before the campus recognized both the artistic genius of Charlie's profile drawings as well as the utter necessity of philosophy." Many of Wilker's devotees nodded in agreement.

Onlookers will note that the First Place Ribbon appears to spend most of its daytime hours placed on another, less impressive, poster. No philosophy club officers were available for comment about this phenomenon.

Dr. Lawler Receives Weaver Award

Dr. Peter Augustine Lawler, Dana Professor of Government at Berry, received the 2007 Richard M. Weaver Prize for Scholarly Letters on Friday October 19 from Dr. Robert Preston of Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, North Carolina.





After the award Dr. Lawler delivered his address on the Crisis of the Self-Evidence of Truth, a powerful critique of the Lockean and Darwinian conceptions of man and a call for the resolution of the crisis of self-evidence through a return to theology.







The distinguished speakers at the two-day conference included Patrick Deneen (Georgetown University), Marc Guerra (Ave Maria University), Mark Henrie (Intercollegiate Studies Institute), Thomas Hibbs (Baylor University), Mary Keys (University of Notre Dame), Daniel Mahoney (Assumption College), and Robert Preston (Belmont Abbey College).

Religion and Philosophy Professors to Speak

The Mount Berry Church and the Chaplain's Office have been sponsoring a series of talks every Monday night on Christian denominations. The Religion and Philosophy Department will be well represented in the following three weeks.

Dr. David McKenzie will speak on Liberal/Progressive churches on Monday October 22.

I will talk about the Orthodox Church on the following Monday.

Dean Tom Kennedy will speak on the liturgical churches (Anglican/Episcopal and Lutheran) on November 5.

All of the talks are in the Krannert Red Room at 6:00pm.

I don't know how Dr. McKenzie or Dean Kennedy will do their presentations but my plan is to give a very brief overview of Orthodox theology and practice, and the key differences with other Christian traditions. The rest of the time will be for questions and discussion.

Thoughts on Evil

As Halloween approaches, a philosopher's thoughts turn to evil. The "problem of evil" is one of the most widely discussed philosophical problems. It was a particular obsession of the great German philosopher and mathematician Leibniz. Lately, I've been thinking about Leibniz's work on this problem. Leibniz famously argued that the world is the best of all possible worlds that God could have created, a view that was later ridiculed by Voltaire in his book Candide. But it seems that even in Leibniz's day, several philosophers denied that there is a best of all possible worlds. Instead, they claimed that possible worlds are like numbers, and just as there is no greatest number, so too there is no greatest world.

But in that case what is God to do? Would He just arbitrarily pick a world, say world number 287,184, even though He could have just as easily created world number 287,185, which is greater! This would seem arbitrary and unbecoming of the all-powerful and all-good God. Surely God does not play dice! (Here I am assuming that there are as many possible worlds as real numbers and that the higher-numbered world is better than the lower one. For the sake of simplicity I am assuming that no two worlds are equally good, though, of course, this need not be the case.)

It seems that certain Jesuit theologians in Leibniz's time argued for God's arbirtary choice of this world. This would explain why this world contains so much evil. God had to pick some world to create, and whichever world He chose would be such that there are an infinite number of better worlds.

But it seems to me that if there is an infinite number of worlds God could have created, then there are two other options open to God other than arbitarily choosing one world. He could have chosen not to create any. Of course, He didn't do that. Or He could have created an infinite series of worlds that meet a minimum standard of goodness. Perhaps God created all the worlds in the open interval from 0 to infinity, that is, all the worlds that correspond to the positive real numbers. The negative worlds contain too much evil to be worthy of creation. Our world may be, say, in the neighborhood of 300,000 for all we know. (Some evidence points to our world being irrational, perhaps. [A joke]) In any event, not so great, but containing enough goodness to be creation-worthy.

The upshot of all this is that the significant amount of evil in this world is compatible with the existence of an omnipotent and perfect Being who did create the best worlds that can be created.

Or so I think. What do you think?

[An excellent article on Leibniz that I used in preparing this entry is at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-evil/. ]

Philosophy and Religion in Greece

I've just returned from two weeks in Greece. Here are some pictures I took that have philosophical and/or religious relevance.


This is the harbor of Pythagoreio on the island of Samos, birthplace of the philosopher, mathematician, and mystic Pythagoras (best known for the Pythagorean theorem).

And here is a statue of the great man in 'downtown' Pythagoreio.

This is the harbor of Patmos, the island on which John wrote the book of Revelation (or 'Apocalypse' in Greek).











And finally, the Parthenon, the temple of Athena, on the Acropolis in Athens.

Philosophy of Law

We had a tremendous showing at last week's Philosophy of Law discussion. The pizza was piping hot and the conversation was spirited. After an hour of group discussion the event was officially concluded, although many gathered in small groups and continued the conversation.

The questions we explored cycled round and round. What does the history of war reveal about human nature? Is this human nature good? Is it changeable? What makes a just war? Is there ever such a thing as just war? And if all wars are unjust, how else can conflict be resolved? Is this possible given our human nature? And so on and so on.

Four faculty members joined and were a boon to the conversation - Sharon Mattila, Scott Segrest, our Dean (and acting club advisor) Tom Kennedy, and discussion leader Michael Papazian. Following the discussion time, it was suggested that we look into bringing notable pacifist/just war proponent/realist to debate the issue as a campus event. Several names were suggested, and it is our hope as officers to follow through with this goal.

As a first event, this was a tremendous success! It is our hope that every participant felt welcomed to join the discussion and bettered by it. But it is true that sometimes written discourse is needed, so if you have a thought from last Thursday night's discussion that you didn't get to share, or lingering questions or thoughts, reply to this post and keep the conversation going...

-tricia

International Philosophy (Monty Python

And as far as I'm concerned, Wittgenstein is Germanic enough to count.