Carl Sagan's and My Refutation of Theodicy or the Argument from Evil Against God

In an earlier article, I presented a Carl Sagan-inspired proof for the existence not only of God, but of the Christian God from first principles, without appealing to divine revelation, miracles (Not that appealing to miracles isn't legitimate if you have witnessed one or hear about one from someone you trust, but most atheists have not.), or blind faith. But what about reasons for God's non-existence?

The best argument for the Non-Existence of God is some variation of "Stuff goes wrong, but if God existed, nothing would go wrong."Whether we mean Evil, Human Pain, or Animal Pain. But the real root of this is the idea that God would make a being like Satan, or for my Lord of the Rings fans, that Illuvatar would create Melkor. God, the uncaused omniscient, would have to know that Satan would screw things up. Since he made Satan, and knew Satan would mess things up, isn't He responsible? So let's build this into something a little more formal:

An Atheist Argument from Theodicy

1. A Personal God, by definition, must be a good personal being, if He exists.
2. Good personal beings never allow bad things to happen, if they are able to stop them.
3. God is able to stop all bad things, if he exists.
4. Bad things do happen.
Conclusion: God does not exist.

Premise (2) is the only one that seems suspect. Perhaps, though, we can again use Sagan-Logic to clarify the issue. As we recall, Sagan's most memorable thought is that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." If you don't have that extraordinary evidence, then don't accept the claim.

But it seems to me that premise (2) is the most extraordinary claim we can imagine, and we have no evidence at all for that claim. On the contrary, we have a great plenitude of counterexamples.

1. Good mothers allow children to leave their rooms uncleaned (although they might punish them for it) in order that a better good might come about, their children's responsibility.

2. Even good men cannot give all of their wealth to the poor, thus allowing the poor to suffer, because they must feed, clothe and shelter themselves and their families, and invest in their own livelihood, and prepare for their own retirement, and demise.

3. Sometimes it is inevitable that at least one bad thing will happen, but you must choose which one, classically, your wife on one side and 10 innocent people on the other (like in that Spider Man movie with Tobey McGuire) are about to die painful deaths and you can only save one. By allowing the others to die.

4. Sometimes people allow bad to happen (the pain of running the last mile in an 8 mile run) that good may occur (increased stamina, fitness and longevity of the runner).

5. Sometimes people allow bad to happen (laying off 10 of your workers 5 months earlier than you absolutely had to without defrauding the bank) that good may occur (the company you run survives to provide useful services to other people).

And those 5 examples took me about 2 minutes. Clearly it is NOT true that "Good personal beings never allow bad things to happen, if they are able to stop them." One counterexample alone is sufficient to disprove an argument, but I could go on all day with counterexamples, although perhaps one could rephrase the argument against God in a less vulnerable way. If you're actually weighing things, take a look at my Lerner-Sagan Argument for the Christian God a few articles back, and see how this one against God's existence compares. Pretty poorly, I'd say, simply in logical terms. Good people allow bad things to happen all the time. Arguably every person you have ever met does this from time to time, even without realizing it.

But wait, you say, what excuse does God have? He's omnipotent. Why wouldn't he save everyone from pain? I believe the situation is most analogous to the first example I gave of a mother who won't clean up the child's room. God desires a society of human beings who take responsibility for themselves and love one another, who don't pass the buck to someone or something higher than themselves, whether that be the wealthy, God, the government, or the person suffering. God wants human beings to rationally help one another. This is a great good. Arguably great enough to justify the suffering. Nor was God unwilling to enter into the suffering Himself in order to demonstrate that He Himself is willing to pay the cost of what it means to be human in this sinful, painful, crazy world. Let us not shirk away from the cost of becoming saints and creating them by nurturing and loving our fellow crazy humans.