One
of the main arguments against theism is called the argument from
evil. This argument basically says that if a deity existed, he would
not allow evil to exist. But before accepting such an argument, we
must ask ourselves: could there actually be a universe without evil?
It
may seem very easy to imagine such a universe. We simply imagine a
universe filled with planets containing only happy, smiling people.
Wouldn't that qualify as an "evil free" universe? But we
commit a fallacy when we imagine such a universe, a fallacy I might
call the snapshot fallacy. The snapshot fallacy is the fallacy
of assuming that we can get a decent model of a possible universe by
describing a single moment of time in that universe's history. A
universe is not a static thing, but something that persists for
billions of years. So any model or idea of a universe (whether
scientific or philosophical) must consider not just one moment of
time, but a huge length of time – a billion years at least.
A
person using the argument from evil might say: no problem, we can
just imagine a universe without evil existing for a billion years –
a billion years of happy planets filled with nothing but happy
smiling faces. But would such a universe actually be a universe
without evil? I think not. It seems that such an “evil free”
universe would actually have some very serious evils of its own.
Below is a list of some of them.
One
great evil of such an “evil free" universe is that it would be
boring. Imagine you have been living in such a universe for a
thousand years. You wake up one day and say “Let me check the
news.” You go to your favorite news web site, and the main banner
says, “Another perfect day.” You click on the smaller headlines
looking for something interesting, but it's hard to find something
very interesting. They're all just stories about
perfect people having perfect days. You certainly can't go out and
do something dangerous, since neither death nor serious injury is
allowed in your universe.
The newspapers of Utopia are boring
Very
bored, you turn on your television, trying to find an interesting
movie. But the movies are boring. There has been no war, death,
or illness in your universe. No one has ever faced any real danger,
since neither serious injury nor death are allowed in your universe.
So while you might be able to find a mildly interesting movie like
Meet the Fockers or When Harry Met Sally, you cannot
find any really stirring movie such as Gone With the Wind, The
Godfather, Doctor Zhivago, or Titanic.
Now
imagine that this goes on for thousands and millions of years. You
eventually are so bored with your living that perhaps you yearn for
the escape of death – but that cannot ever happen, because death is
an evil, and you are in an “evil free" universe.
Do
you get the idea? It's the very real evil of boredom.
Consider
your freedom in the universe we currently live in. You have the
freedom to be good, and also the freedom to shoot someone. You have
the freedom to give money to charity, and the freedom to steal money
from your local church. But how would things be in an “evil free”
universe? Presumably you would not have such freedom. You could only
speculate on how things might work – perhaps if you wanted to shoot
someone, your gun would suddenly be too hot to handle, or your hand
would get a jolt of electricity from the sky. Or, if you tried to
steal money from your roommate, perhaps you would suddenly become
immobile. Regardless of how it would work, the result would be that
you wouldn't be so free.
We
regard freedom as being a very great good. We are told again and
again: it's okay to empty our country's treasury (or go deep into
national debt), and okay to lose lives and limbs of our soldiers,
because they are fighting for freedom. So if freedom is such a great
good, what should we call a lack of freedom? We might call it an
evil. Indeed, we might call the restrictions on conduct in an “evil
free” universe to be itself an evil – an evil we might call the
evil of restriction.
One
of the most central aspects of our universe is the opportunities it
allows for different types of rising from a lower state to a higher
state, or from a less desirable state to a more desirable state.
Such opportunities can exist on a personal level, a national level,
or a planetary level. A person can rise from a state of poverty and
ignorance to a state of wealth and wisdom. A nation can rise from a
lowly, primitive state to a much more exalted and advanced state. A
species can arise from a cave-dwelling state to a star-exploring state.
One can use the words progress or evolution to describe such risings
from a low state to a much higher state, but our language is weak in
words to describe such ascents. But such risings from low states to
higher states are the life blood of the stories that hold our
interest.
But
what if there were no such opportunities? What if we lived in a universe
in which everyone had the same kind of life-story, a life-story that
could never be something like “I traveled a long journey upward
from the lowly anguish of poverty and ignorance, and ascended to the
top of the mountain” but could only be something like this: “I
started out thousands of years ago in a state of complete comfort and
happiness, and now here I am centuries later, still existing in that
same state of comfort and happiness”? And what if the tale of
every country and every species was never anything more stirring than
this: “They started out in a perfectly desirable state, and always
kept existing in that same perfectly desirable state, ending up
after their long journey exactly as they were when they began”?
There
would, of course, be a certain problem with such a situation, and we
might call that problem the evil of stagnation.
The
Evil of Non-Appreciation
If
we have experiences with suffering, unhappiness and hardship, this
makes us more likely to appreciate and enjoy times of comfort and
happiness. But imagine if there had never been suffering,
unhappiness, or hardship. Would we appreciate the comfort and
happiness we had? No, we would not. In fact, we would be completely
blasé and complacent about our pain-free life. We would be like some
spoiled “silver spoon” billionaire's son who never fully
appreciated a delicious meal and stylish, roomy houses and fine
clothes because he had never experienced anything else. The result
would be a serious evil: the evil of non-appreciation.
It's
easy to say that this would not be a big factor, but some simple math
suggests otherwise. Let's imagine a person named John who has a 70
year life with some unhappiness and hardships, followed by a million
year afterlife of heavenly bliss. Then let's imagine a person named
Bill who experiences nothing but a million and 70 years of comfort
and happiness. Suppose that John's experience with unhappiness and
hardships makes him enjoy his afterlife 10% more because he
appreciates it more. The result may be that John experiences a total
net amount of happiness more than 9% greater than Bill experiences,
even taking into account John's 70 years of unhappiness.
The
Evil of Low Diversity
Nowadays
many people regard diversity as a good. For example, colleges often
proudly say: we don't want uniformity and homogeneity in our college;
we value diversity. Diversity is a good thing. We might say that one
of our universe's best characteristics is its very high degree of
diversity. On our planet we have a very high degree of diversity in
life forms and in human beings. But the universe offers much richer
diversity.
Considering
the universe as a whole, we might consider with awe the staggering
degree of diversity it contains. There is a diversity of life forms,
a diversity of histories, a diversity of physical locations, an
unimaginable degree of variety. This has non-trivial consequences.
For one thing, it means that exploring different planets in the
universe (whether physically or by receiving radio or television
signals) will prove to be a source of endless abundant pleasure and
fascination, because there is such a huge variety of planets.
But
imagine there isn't so much variety. Imagine things are much, much
more monochromatic, because every planet is in a state of perfection.
This lack of variation and variety is itself a certain type of evil,
which we might call the evil of low diversity.
All
Possible Universes Have Serious Evils
These
considerations lead to an important conclusion: viewing a universe
from a proper perspective that includes huge vistas of time, it must
be said that every possible universe has serious evils. While a
perpetually pleasant pain-free universe may seem like an “evil free”
universe if one considers it at a single instant of time (the
snapshot fallacy), as soon as we fully and vividly imagine that universe persisting on
in such a state for billions of years, we realize that such a
universe would actually have serious evils such as the ones I have
listed. One cannot evade such a consequence by imagining that the
“evil free” universe lasts for a relatively short length of time,
for such a universe would then have the evil of death, and the evil
of its one demise. Nor can we imagine a truly evil-free universe by
imagining an unpopulated universe, as that universe would have its
own evils such as evils of low-diversity and evils of non-experience.
I may note that my list of five evils of an "evil free" universe is by no means complete. There are no doubt quite a few others that I have not mentioned.
But
while a perpetually pleasant universe would have the evils I have
mentioned, would it not be better than our universe? That depends on
various unknowns regarding our universe. Some of the unknowns are as
follows:
- Is there a life after death?
- If there is a life after death, how long does it last?
- If there is a life after death, what percentage of people experience bliss in such an afterlife?
- If someone first experiences earthly sadness and then moves on to a blissful state in an afterlife, will he enjoy such a state only slightly more (because of greater appreciation and contrast), or will he enjoy it very much more?
- Do the civilized species on planets such as ours eventually reach a state of great abundance and comfort because of scientific and technical progress?
- Do such civilized species typically exist in such a state for a period many times longer (possibly thousands of times longer) than the time length that they exist in widespread discomfort?
- If the latter hypothesis is true, could it be that the number of civilized species now existing in abundance and comfort is many times greater than the number of civilized species such as ours (considering the universe as a whole)? What is the ratio between these two numbers? Could it be as high as 100 to 1 or 1000 to 1, given the great age of the universe?
- For the average person living in our universe, what is the ratio between the number of years spent living in happiness and the number of years spent living in unhappiness (including time spent living in an afterlife)?
Under
some sets of answers to these questions, we might judge that a
perpetually pleasant universe is superior to our own universe. Under
other plausible sets of answers to these questions, it might be right
to judge that a perpetually pleasant universe is no better than our
universe, or inferior to our universe. This point can easily be
supported with specific hypothetical examples, but I will save that
for another blog post. Here I may briefly note that in any universe
in which the ratio of happiness to misery is very high (say 100 to 1
or 1000 to 1), considered over a billion-year time span, there is a large possibility that the existence of
suffering and pain may be ultimately justifiable largely on the grounds that
it leads to a greater net ratio of happiness compared to unhappiness or pleasure compared to pain,
partially because of factors discussed above. Because of the
possibility of an afterlife, and the possibility that our planet is
untypical (being inhabited by an unusually primitive civilization),
it is entirely possible that we live in a such a universe. The
possibility of an afterlife cannot be excluded in such a discussion,
as it is a possible consequence of the existence of a deity, which is
exactly what is being debated.
We
do not know the answers to the questions listed above. So we are in
no position to judge whether our universe is inferior to some
perpetually pleasant universe that we can imagine. This is one reason
why the main argument for atheism (the argument from evil) is not
valid. Another reason the argument is not valid is that a theist can
defeat it (with great simplicity) by simply conceding the possibility
of a deity with somewhat less than infinite power.
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