Intellectual Shenanigans

 I sometimes enjoy reading the God Squad column by Rabbi Marc Gellman, who is obviously an intelligent fellow. But he is also a God and religion apologist (when he’s not getting in his humorous digs against Christianity), and at times his argumentation leaves a great deal to be desired. Thus in his latest (as I write) column (July 25, 2020), a reader asks: “How can God be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, if evil still exists in the world?”


This is the classic Problem of Evil in theology. Rabbi Gellman offers the classic theological answer:

Murder, war, oppression, racism, bigotry and every example of wanton cruelty are all on us. We choose to do evil and our choices soil the world. We are able to make these bad choices because we are able to choose what we do and we are able to choose what we do because we have freedom of the will. … So the question now arises, “Why did God give us free will?” … The answer is that without free will we cannot love. We choose whom we shall love. We choose to love God. We choose to follow God’s law of life. … So … we are indeed living in the best of all possible worlds by a benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent God.

Phew. I won’t even try to refute this argument, or jumble or arguments, because it is too ridiculous; or, at best, its logic is obscure and its assumptions questionable or question begging (not least among which is that we even have free will in the requisite sense). But I am now chiefly concerned with Gellman’s treatment of another essential component of the Problem of Evil. For the sort of evil that the quoted passage above addresses is that which is due to human agency. But what about all the bad stuff that happens to us (and other animals) through no fault (or agency or free will) of our own?

Here is what Gellman has to say about that:

Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and such are basically not the result of human sin although climate change must be considered as a contributing factor and climate change is on us. However, an aboveground or underwater earthquake are [sic] just the natural result of the cracking and moving of the earth’s crust and the earth has a moving crust because it has a molten core and the existence of a molten core makes the earth produce gasses that enable life to flourish here on planet earth. There is nothing inherently evil about the breathing in and breathing out of the earth’s crust.

That’s it! That’s his rebuttal of the non-human part of the Problem of Evil. As I read it, he is arguing two things. (1) Yes, some bad stuff happens that is not due to human agency, but it is the inadvertent side-effect of something good that compensates for it, and we couldn’t have that other good, which is necessary to our maximum happiness, without that bad stuff coming along with it. (2) A non-human event, such as an earthquake, is simply not the sort of thing that can be considered evil, precisely because it is not itself, or the product of, an act of will by a free agent.
           
But these arguments are also silly. This time I will take the time to explain why. Argument (1) just ignores the question asked by the reader, which is why an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being couldn’t bring about the good stuff without the bad stuff accompanying it. Gellman’s breezy “the existence of a molten core makes the earth produce gasses that enable life to flourish here on planet earth” is just too swift a way of excusing highly destructive earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes, not to mention morbid illnesses and painful deformities and starvation due to crop failures and the rest of the panoply of human or animal woes that mortality is heir to.
           
But finally it is argument (2) that is what really incited me to write this essay, for its fallaciousness is so blatant. It is possible to expand the other arguments Gellman has given, in what is after all just a short column, to strengthen his case. But this last argument is just a sleight of hand. “There is nothing inherently evil about the breathing in and breathing out of the earth’s crust,” he writes.
           
Insofar as this is an argument, it trades on equivocation. The word “evil” can refer to the intentional action, or character, of a person, or it can refer to an event or circumstance that is very harmful to innocent beings. The Argument from Evil is, I submit, about the second sense of evil: Why does so much bad stuff happen to even good people (not to mention nonhuman animals)? But Gellman has transformed the entire debate to one about the existence of human (or “moral”) evil. And of course, even just by definition, such evil cannot be the property of anything that is not a person, such as movements of the earth’s crust. Not only is this an equivocation (or it could also be called an ignoratio elenchi or changing of the subject), but it seems at odds with argument (1), which traded on the goodness of “gasses that enable life to flourish here on planet earth” compensating for the evil of destructive earthquakes and the like. But if “the breathing in and breathing out of the earth’s crust” that is caused by the earth’s molten core is not the sort of thing that could be evil (even though it in turn causes destructive earthquakes and the like), then how can the production of gasses by that same molten core be good (even if it in turn enables life to flourish)?

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