The Problem of Evil, Part 1

I have due in a week or so a paper on the Problem of Evil. The problem is well-traveled, and is indeed a problem. But, as we have seen, problems are not beyond what we can overcome, and may indeed have an answer. No need to through out the baby with the bathwater on this one.

I have a stack of books to go through, so I will be using this space to sort out their individual contributions, and perhaps also my final thoughts. To begin the process, a very brief introduction can be given by Alister McGrath in his Christian Theology.

The problem, he briefly states as: "How can the presence of evil or suffering be reconciled with the Christian affirmation of the goodness of the God who created the world?" (263) He begins with Irenaeus, who, like many Greeks of his time, saw humans as potential. It is the case for these thinkers that humans have the capacity and ability to develop, and have within them ultimately this potentiality. It is the view many hold today in some sense, in that it views the problem in terms of what God wants us to become; it is a form of "soul-making". If it is God's will that we learn humility and develop a sense of compassion, perhaps there is some merit. Francis Collins and Timothy Keller have both recently adopted something of this view, noting that some of the times humans grow and learn the most is in the presence of suffering, deserved or otherwise. It is in these times that we learn forgiveness, mercy, and grace, and where we most earnestly seek God. McGrath credits this view in part to John Hick, who holds that in order for humans to become what God desires for them, they must endure evil as they take part in a free world. Choosing good only has value in the event that one is not compelled to, and that choosing evil is at all times an option.

But there is a problem. Is this a picture of a God who allows suffering to teach us lessons? Where this might make sense on a personal level, what lessons are we to learn, individually or collectively from created tragedies like genocide or natural ones like tsunamis? This seems to come dangerously close to the view that people "deserve" natural disasters because God is angry, and does nothing but perpetrate the idea that God is out for blood. God will judge, to be sure, but the view that he is in the process of doing so constantly, and that we ought to mind our manners lest he smite us is anything but helpful, and certainly not Biblical. It also brings into question our duty to resist evil if God has purposed evil in the world. If evil is the maker of the soul, on what grounds should it be defeated or fought against?

He then mentions St. Augustine, who was combating the notion of the Gnostics that evil the world was because matter itself is evil, and that creation came to be by an evil being. Redemption would be by a different god, one who was different from the "demigod" of creation. Augustine understood that creation and redemption were necessarily both the work of God. And it is human freedom that introduces evil by way of the temptation by Satan and fall in the Garden of Eden. But, the problem here is that humans could only choose evil if God put it in the Garden, which was supposed to be perfect, where God and man mutually cohabited, for them to choose. Augustine explained that Satan fell from Heaven when he was tempted, but again, who tempted Satan? Was their sin and evil in Heaven? How can we account for the origin of rebellion against God? McGrath, and apparently Augustine have no answer at this point, and is one I think needs to be answered by the sovereignty of God. But we will have to return to this point later on.

McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology: An Introduction, Second Edition Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and Regent College, Vancouver. Blackwell Publishers, 1997, Pgs 263-267.

An Update... and a Bible Difficulty

For anyone who might read this who otherwise might not know, I have a few things going on that are prohibiting me from spending as much time on this as I would like.

The first of those things is school. It isn't that I have too much to do, or that it's too difficult, but that, as per the nature of philosophy, my homework isn't limited to what has been explicitly assigned. And, as per the current nature of the University, philosophy courses regularly make jokes and invectives at the expense of believers in anything other than scientific naturalism (or whatever other view the professor happens to prefer, be it Jungian or Spinozist or whatever else). What this means is that I am constantly under fire for positions held, and spend more time better understanding and solidifying my positions than actually doing homework. It is both a blessing and a curse. I have been pushed to be able to defend myself, which I welcome and accept, but have had to deal with a good deal of unnecessary and childish ridicule. The real disappointment at the end of the day isn't my feelings, but the resolve of those who are less committed to truth and more easily swayed by one-liners and philosophical quips. Professors deliberately tell half-truths on issues of high importance to score points in laughter like their tenure depended on it.

So, what I will do from now on, instead of trying to put together groups of blogs about certain topics, is write about what it is that I'm doing at any given time. It should give me a chance to nail down some thoughts and collect my ideas, as well as open them to some criticism to whomever wishes to criticize.

That being said...

I have spent the last few days trying to find the best way to answer my Modern Philosophy teacher and skeptical classmates that the Bible is not wrong about the value of Pi. For those not in the know, 1 Kings 7:23 says the following:

"And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about." (KJV, italics mine)

Ok, so a molten sea is a great big vessel, which we see here is "ten cubits from the one brim to the other," has a height of five cubits, and a line of thirty cubits compassed it round about. And a cubit, we know, was approximately the distance between the elbow and the tip of the outstretched hand, or about 18 inches. So then, this molten sea had the following dimensions:

Height: 5 cubits, or 90 inches, or 7.5 feet
Diameter: 10 cubits, or 180 inches, or 15 feet
Circumference: 30 cubits, or 540 inches, or 45 feet

Problem? The ratio of the circumference and diameter of a circle is necessarily 3.141592... or "pi". Here it seems the Bible thinks pi=3 (30 cubits / 10 cubits). If you believe that is what the Bible says, then you are likely to see in this passage an error so basic that it renders the entire Bible unreliable.

So after a couple days trying to sort this out (it's more complicated than you might think), I have come to the following couple of conclusions.

First of all, it does matter. Second of all, it does not mean that God says pi is 3, and mathematicians are wrong. But what we can say is that, (1) Cubits are an inherently imprecise standard of measurement. Using a body part is clearly not standardized, and is therefore better suited to rough approximations, such as how we might make rough measurements of our own. When using cubits, the Bible does not use them with much precision. It measures things in half cubits, but not thirds or fourths. It just isn't reasonable to do so. With that in mind, it is easy to see how 30.4 cubits could become 30 cubits, and 9.68 cubits could become 10 cubits, which is an example of numbers with a ratio of 3.141592 between them. And 30.4 cubits would be about 45 feet, 7 inches, or 540 inches, plus 7 inches. Plus or minus 7 inches matters to a mathematician, but not to someone measuring in 18 inch segments of forearms. It is therefore an error--a category mistake--to assume that round numbers are certainly false.

If gas was $3.06 per gallon, it would not be incorrect to say that gas was $3 per gallon. Or if a room was 10'2" x 12'1", 10x12 would be a sufficient measurement.

Some have argued that the Bible doesn't explicitly say they are round numbers, so we cannot assume that. But we know for a fact that if it was a round vessel, then 10 and 30 were not the actual numbers, so assuming a round figure is logically sound. And in the examples of our speech today, one need not qualify the figures given as round numbers, because they suit our audience. If we are in court we may have to say exactly how much gas cost. If we are ordering carpet we may have to say exactly what the measurements are, but for a general measurement it would not be necessary.

Furthermore, in his book, The Joy of Pi, David Blatner includes the following:

"What is pi?

Mathematician: Pi is the number expressing the relationship between the
circumference of a circle and its diameter.
Physicist: Pi is 3.1415927 plus or minus 0.000000005.
Engineer: Pi is about 3."

(http://www.abarim-publications.com/Bible_Commentary/1Kings7v23.html)

That site offers that quote from Blatner, and goes on to offer several solutions to this problem by way of some advanced mathematical theories concerning the validity of using numbers at all, which are very interesting, but a bit off topic. But their conclusion is that the Biblical context for these numbers is more important than the actual values of numbers at all.

All of this is really the blown up way of saying that the Bible's inerrancy is not threatened by this problem. It is a difficulty for sure, but not an error. The bottom line for me is that this a contextual description of the vessel, not a blueprint for it. The writer may or may not have had the technical prowess to know the extended theoretical value of pi, but in either case is not wrong per se in his description.

And that is what I will attempt to persuade my Professor and his anti-Bible minions of in the morning.