The Human Question

This otherwise brilliant rhetorician says something pretty stupid in his debate with D'Souza. When trying to argue against D'Souza's claim that even human evil shows something exceptional about human nature, Ehrman says that human torture is just a bigger version of what his pet cat does. A human engaging in torture is blameworthy: a cat playing with a mouse is not.  You can't get from one to the other merely by making the other bigger, more complex, etc.  Otherwise we shouldn't blame Hitlerlike behavior: it's just a result of how would-be Hitlers are wired (just as the same is true for cats).

D'Souza and Ehrman both make excellent points and give good rebuttals.  And I certainly found fault with Ehrman's brilliant but post-evangelical approach to philosophical questions.  But for the moment I'll point out how D'Souza could have done better. When Ehrman asked "where is God when there is suffering without relief?" one of the answers that should have been given is that God is present in creation even in those situations.  Otherwise, the impression is given that God is present only when performing miracles.  Given such an assumption, the choice for a theists would be between something like deism (inasmuch as God would often seem to be non-provident) and hyper-supernaturalism (God's always doing miracles... which does not seem to be obviously true). Another point that D'Souza makes (and is a good one) is skillfully turned in a different direction by Ehrman.  D'Souza argues that human evil outstrips Darwinian necessity.  Good point, provi...

These are dialectical inasmuch as they do not so much demonstrate their point as argue hypothetically, piggy-backing in a sense on claims made by atheists. If the atheist proposes that the problem of evil defeats theism AND argues that the multiplicity of universes diminishes the strength of arguments for theism based upon the anthropic principle, then...the theist may propose ad hoc that these alternate universes may have conscious life forms without evil & suffering, the preponderance of which weakens the argument for atheism.  Yes, this is ad hoc, but no more so than positing imperceptible universes.  The point is that a principled opposition to ad hoc arguments at least opens the door to some that the atheist may not desire to admit. But if the atheist objects that these alternate universes are more likely to have suffering too, then the theist may ask if there is (apart from any miracles) a natural connection between life and suffering.  If that is such that ...

If evil is a problem for theism (specifically for providence), the beauty and goodness are a problem for atheism.  Of course, one can always subjectivize the latter two in order to diminish their support of theism.  But what is to keep such a person from subjectivizing evil as well, thus deflating the argument against theism.