Do You Still Think God Is Good?

Candid Conversations about the Problem of Evil

Clayton Brumby

• Publisher: Morgan James Faith
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781630470654
• eBook ISBN: 9781630470661
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

A grappling with the philosophical challenge of defending a God that some think is inept, impotent, or evil given the violent and unfair world we live in.
The Greek philosopher Epicurus is credited with saying:
Either God wants to abolish evil and cannot; or he can but does not want to; or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to but cannot, he is impotent. If he can and does not want to, he is wicked. But if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how come evil is in the world?
This is known as the Epicurean paradox. Obviously, mankind has been wrestling with the problem of evil for some time; Epicurus lived between 340-270 BC.
Fast-forward twenty-three hundred years. Eric Jennings is a freshman at the University of Florida. He and his older sister, Libby, have moved in from the mission field to enter the premed program to become medical missionaries. Eric's roommate, Todd Rehnquist, though a baseball teammate and a good friend, is an atheist. And he poses the "problem" to Eric using an interesting quote. This sets in motion a conversation between Eric, Todd, Libby, Ray Cohen, the Jennings' former science teacher, and Mike Murphy, a local youth minister and one of Eric's spiritual mentors. The conversation happens at an area breakfast haunt, the Gator Skillet. Follow them as they wrestle with this most profound of issues and connect the dots. You'll find that the answers are as simple as they are surprising.

Chapter One

It Always Begins with a Question

“Okay, Fly-boy. Here’s one for you.”

Fly-boy. Eric winced. But it was a nickname Todd seemed determined to have stick. “I’m not trying to start anything with this, okay?” Todd continued, sincerely. “We’ve covered this ground before, you know—you and God and all—and we probably will again. And I’m good with you believing what you believe—your choice.”

Eric nodded as he folded his hands in his lap and leaned back in the desk chair, showing Todd he was taking him seriously and that he had his full attention.

“It’s from a book called The Pony Fish’s Glow,” Todd continued. “It’s for a philosophy paper I have to write. The author is a professor named George Williams. He taught at the State University of New York. And he said here that this California anthropologist—well, let me just read you the quote:

[California anthropologist Sarah Hrdy] studied a population of monkeys, Hanuman langurs, in northern India. Their mating system is what biologists call harem polygyny: dominant males have exclusive sexual access to a group of adult females, as long as they can keep other males away. Sooner or later, a stronger male usurps the harem and the defeated one must join the ranks of celibate outcasts. The new male shows his love for his new wives by trying to kill their unweaned infants. For each successful killing, a mother soon stops lactating and goes into estrous.… Deprived of her nursing baby, a female soon starts ovulating. She accepts the advances of her baby’s murderer, and he becomes the father of her next child.

Do you still think God is good?¹

Todd looked up at Eric with raised eyebrows as a way of putting the ball in his court.

Eric grew thoughtful. Through other conversations he’d had with Todd, he knew this was a crucial question for his roommate. Todd had experienced some raw things in his nineteen years, and this kind of thing was no small issue for him.

Eric shrugged and laughed quietly. “I wouldn’t have a clue as to where to begin with a question like that.” But then something occurred to him, and he glanced at his watch. “But I have a friend who might, and this is just the kind of question he loves. It’s early enough. Why don’t we give him a call?”

Todd agreed, and the call was made.

“Mike Murphy!” Eric grinned when he heard his friend’s voice.

“Eric Jennings!” Mike exclaimed. It had been months since they’d last talked. “Wuzzup??!”

Eric laughed. Mike was in a light mood.

“My roommate has just asked me a pretty tough philosophical question, and I thought we might discuss it.”

Mike told him he was just finishing up making the family some homemade pizza and he’d have to call him back, but they agreed to Skype. When Mike got back to them and was introduced to Todd, Eric had Todd read the quote. He began but stopped after identifying the scientist who did the study. “I don’t know…maybe the name of the anthropologist—Hrdy—is a typo or something,” Todd said.

“Actually no,” Mike said. “Hrdy is the way her husband’s name is spelled. I think he has or had a medical practice out in Sacramento. It’s an eastern European name—Czech, if I remember correctly.”

Todd nodded. Then he read the quote through, finishing with, “Do you still think God is good?”

Mike took a moment to collect his thoughts. He was familiar with Williams’ challenge. He’d dealt with it a few years earlier when he and a friend had done a study on the problem of evil.

“Just to be clear, Todd, Sarah Hrdy wasn’t the one who asked the question; Dr. Williams was. And I think we can agree that his articulation of the infant monkeys’ deaths was intended to be provocative. Why else would he have asked this? He’s not stupid, though. He can’t indict the langur for murder. Murder involves moral obligation, something no monkey has. So what’s he doing?”

The two boys looked at each other. “He’s making a case against God, for one,” Todd then answered.

“Exactly,”² Mike replied. “He wonders how this kind of macabre situation can be reconciled with the idea of a God who is all-good and all-powerful. It’s an absurdity to him. And if you allow him to suck you into this shell game of his, you’ll miss the massive problem he’s just created for himself.”

Todd laughed. “He’s just stuck it to God. How has he created a problem for himself?”

“Sticking it to God has and always will be one very good way to make problems for yourself,” Mike answered dryly. “And I’ll show you how that happened here, just from the standpoint of reason.”

Seeing he had the boys’ attention, Mike continued. “So here’s the question, Todd. Where does Professor Williams get his idea of murder?”

“It’s what happens when the lead ape is supplanted…”

“They’re not apes; they’re monkeys. And murder is precisely what’s not going on in the harem, but we’ll get to that,” Mike said. “What I’d like to know, though, is where the concept of murder comes from. That’s an idea Professor Williams knows about; that’s part of his world but not part of theirs.

“You see, there is a moral threshold here. The ideas of should and shouldn’t signify moral obligations. They are issues the professor had to deal with daily, but nowhere do monkeys have to deal with them. And that’s the difference. So why would murder be a part of his knowing and not theirs? Where does the whole idea of moral obligations come from? Maybe Dr. Williams didn’t realize it when he wrote this, but by raising the idea he brought the question back down on his own head.”

Todd was quiet. He hadn’t considered things from this angle.

Mike then observed, “There’s a second issue here, and it has everything to do with his rhetorical strategy: the application of murder to the langur’s actions—killing the infants when he takes over the harem. Williams was an evolutionary biologist—”

“Why are you now using the past tense with this guy?” Todd interrupted.

“He died in 2010.”

Todd nodded his understanding, so Mike continued. “Williams, along with Peter Singer at Princeton, would be an example of, should I say, a militant or doctrinaire Darwinist. I’m not using these terms in a pejorative sense, mind you. People like this are just committed to applying evolution’s implications consistently. Evolution understands mankind as simply an extension of the animal kingdom—we’re not different in kind, only degree. So, for instance, if humans have rights, then animals have rights too. Peter Singer is a leading animal rights advocate.”

“You disagree with animal rights?” Todd asked.

“No, only the basis of them,” Mike replied. “Animal rights is a very Christian idea, actually. William Wilberforce, the English statesman who was instrumental in the abolition of slavery, was an animal rights advocate, but his rationale was decidedly different from Williams’ or Singer’s. To Wilberforce, mankind was truly different from the animal kingdom, not in degree but in kind. Man is made in God’s image, but as such we don’t own the world—we can’t do with its creatures anything we like. We are, in fact, stewards of the world and, that being the case, have a responsibility to treat our fellow creatures humanely. The Bible speaks to the humane treatment of animals.³ So in raising and harvesting animals for food or clothing, we need to be aware of their basic needs and welfare. And if we are going to kill them as part of that harvesting we don’t do it brutally or callously; we do it humanely. God will hold us accountable. So conserving habitats for manatees and owls and protecting dolphins and sea turtles from the tuna nets are all very Judeo-Christian ideas.

“Where Williams got himself into trouble was when he conflated the idea of murder with the langur’s actions.⁴ He didn’t mean to, but he brought up the other side of the coin. If humans are simply another animal, a mere extension of the animal kingdom, then why are we the only creature saddled with moral responsibility? Why aren’t moral obligations or prohibitions part of the monkeys’ picture as well?”

“I’m not following you,” Todd admitted.

“If we’re not different in kind, only in degree,” Mike continued, “and if humans have moral obligations and duties, then why don’t they? Where does this moral threshold come from? Why don’t we charge the cheetah with murder when it runs down the antelope and begins ripping it apart? Or the Orca when it terrorizes the poor seal before devouring it? If the Darwinists are taking their evolutionary worldview seriously, they have to admit, either the animals need to be held accountable for their actions, or we should no more be constrained by moral obligations than the langurs. Why are humans morally obligated while the rest of the animal kingdom gets off scot-free?”

Both boys were quiet and thinking. Then Todd shrugged and suggested, “Maybe our moral capacity is tied somehow to our advanced intellectual development…maybe.”

Mike nodded quietly. “Well, let’s think about that.

“At the end of World War II in Europe, the Western Allies—the United States and Britain—rushed in to capture the chief engineers of the Nazi war machine before the Russians could get to them. Why? Because we knew the Germans were two to three years ahead of us from the standpoint of technology. Swept-wing fighter-jet aircraft, ballistic and cruise missiles, superior battle-tank design. In this regard, the Nazis were way ahead. But morally they had degenerated to the monstrous. We found that out when we liberated the concentration camps. So I’m not sure the superior intellect idea flies.”

Todd was stumped.

Mike then added, “What the Nazis show us is that the intellect is necessary but not sufficient.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well,” Mike responded thoughtfully, “fire needs oxygen to burn the forest down, so oxygen is necessary. But if it was also sufficient, every forest would automatically burn down in the presence of oxygen. That they don’t shows it isn’t. You need something more, something specific; a sufficient cause—a careless camper or a lightning strike.”

Mike then continued quietly and deliberately, so both boys understood his questions were not simply rhetorical. “So…where do we come up with the concept of murder, and why should it matter? Professor Williams was disgusted enough about what went on in the monkey’s harem to use it as an example, but why? Unless he believed he lived in a moral universe, he shouldn’t have been. The fact is, he did believe in a moral universe; he couldn’t have lived in a universe that wasn’t. You’d have seen that side of him for sure if he’d caught one of his students cheating, or his stockbroker if the good professor had found out his managed funds were being embezzled.

“So here’s the question: Do we, in fact, live in a moral universe? Do objective moral values exist—moral duties that are truly binding on all of humanity, in all human cultures, whether we believe them or not? Is the tin-horn dictator who reaches into his chemical stockpile and gases a village of civilians—men, women and children he feels pose a threat—a murderer, or was he just doing something politically or culturally unsavory? Was the holocaust a true evil or just something we believe was socially unacceptable—we’d have preferred it hadn’t happened?”

Mike waited for a response, but there was none. “Let’s be clear. In a Darwinian world, might makes right; the strong survive. So where does this concept of evil come from, the whole idea of the moral—shouldn’t or ought?”

Mike grew quiet again to see if there was an answer forthcoming. “Todd…?”

Todd looked at Eric sheep...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Preface Two Challenges
• Chapter One It Always Begins with a Question
• Chapter Two No Apologies Necessary
• Chapter Three Inescapable
• Chapter Four Alone
• Chapter Five The Professor’s Questions
• Chapter Six The Tale of Two Timeframes
• Chapter Seven Connecting the Dots
• Postscript Where Do I Sign?
• Appendix I Exposing a Darwinian Straw Man
• Appendix II The Question of Dinosaurs
• Appendix III The Fall of the Angels
• Bibliography