Swinburne Recycled
We’ve been having this lively discussion of Swinburne on suffering, so I thought I’d temporarily re-post this old comment from last June.
Richard Swinburne is interesting. I’ve said so before. So has Mark Fournier at Tachyphrenia. And now it’s time to say it some more. Because the things Swinburne says here are truly revolting, and yet they are, of course, what you get if you try to reconcile the omnipotent omnibenevolent God with the existence and abundance of suffering in the world – just what Darwin couldn’t manage to reconcile himself to. There’s an irony of sorts in the fact that it’s Swinburne’s view that is considered by many – by surprisingly many – to be the ‘devout’ and ‘holy’ and therefore (why? why therefore?) ‘good’ one, and Darwin’s that is considered the impious and wicked one. The approval of the deliberate causing and continuance of pain and suffering to billions of sentient beings is considered good, and the disapproval and rejection of that is considered wicked. That’s interesting, and it is, if you ask me, a sign of something badly corrupt at the heart of the whole swindle.
Theodicy provides good explanations of why God sometimes — for some or all of the short period of our earthly lives — allows us to suffer pain and disability.
Good? Good explanations? Good in what sense?
Although intrinsically bad states, these difficult times often serve good purposes for the sufferers and for others. My suffering provides me with the opportunity to show courage and patience. It provides you with the opportunity to show sympathy and to help alleviate my suffering. And it provides society with the opportunity to choose whether or not to invest a lot of money in trying to find a cure for this or that particular kind of suffering.
Well why stop there? It also provides pharmaceutical companies with the opportunity to develop pain medications, and nurses with the opportunity to apologize for the fact that the pain can’t be alleviated, and vicars and priests with the opportunity to pray that it will be alleviated, and God with the opportunity to refuse to alleviate it, and the funeral people with the opportunity to dispose of the corpse after the victim has committed suicide. Lots and lots of opportunities. Good. So – we should all act accordingly? We should all rush outside with our carving knives and soldering irons and distribute injuries generously around the neighborhood so that there will be further abundance of such opportunities? Suffering is a good thing because it creates these good opportunities so there should be lots more of it so we should all bend every nerve to create more of it?
No. We don’t actually think that’s the case. So why does Swinburne get to claim that it is the case, and that that’s a ‘good’ explanation? Why doesn’t everybody for miles around just tell him ‘That’s disgusting’ until he’s so embarrassed he stops saying it?
That’s a real question. I find it baffling.
Although a good God regrets our suffering, his greatest concern is surely that each of us shall show patience, sympathy and generosity and, thereby, form a holy character. Some people badly need to be ill for their own sake, and some people badly need to be ill to provide important choices for others. Only in that way can some people be encouraged to make serious choices about the sort of person they are to be. For other people, illness is not so valuable.
Oh, godalmighty. That is such crap, and such transparent crap – so carefully arranged to get the conclusion he wants (God is okay really even though it seems to be an awful shit) with that last little escape hatch – for other people, illness not so useful. Give me a break. Swinburne looks at the world: sees that some people get ill and suffer, others don’t; needs to make this harmonize with ‘a good God’; explains that suffering is good for some people and not for others; job done.
An analogy will show that what I have written is not an ad hoc hypothesis postulated to save theism from disconfirmation.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Oh, that’s a good one. He’s not only interesting, he’s also a comedian. A sadistic comedian, but a comedian.
I put this comment on the “odious beliefs” thread but it seems equally pertinent here…so excuse my repetition!
OB: “He was focused on the by-products of suffering rather than the by-products of free will.”
Swinburne: “Some people badly need to be ill for their own sake, and some people badly need to be ill to provide important choices for others.”
I don’t see how you can use “free will” arugments in the context of (most) illness.
I had cancer as a child. According to Swinburne, this was because either I needed to be ill for my own sake, or some of the people around me needed the opportunity to make “important choices”.
I think it difficult to justify either of these alternatives. The second is the worst: here “I” was just a means to an end; my suffering necessary for their improvement.
Ha! But you were a means to a *good* end!
I’m not sure what exactly that end is, but clearly your wellbeing is worth much less than teaching others compassion. Especially when those others are so utterly wicked that they need to be literally hit on the head in order to even consider being compassionate. I can certainly see why it’s fair and just to sacrifice an innocent kid’s life for such scoundrels.
God is in charge, and deliberately allows people to suffer and die horribly.
Therfore god is a nasty little shit whom I want nothing to do with.
Thus,if you are going to believe in a god at all, this leads directly to eithe Manichaenism, or Gnosticism.
Both of which are regarded as dangerous heresies by all the mainstream churches.
Oops.
G. Tingey: yes, this is one of the big reasons why I’m an atheist. Apart from anything else it allows me to have a better relationship with God than I would be able to if I believed in Him.
Is this Swinburne guy sufficiently important to justify so much of our attention? I had never heard of him before your posts. (Of course religion passes me by so I pay no attention to it at all.)
Count me in for Gnosticism. It’s the only theology that really answers the Question of Evil (i.e., Jehovah is a Right Bastard).
Well, yes – that’s part of why I commented on him in the first place. He’s at a little-known but influential university called ‘Oxford’ – so he does have a certain prestige.
He was sufficiently important to debate Dawkins and Atkins on tv, apparently, and sufficiently important for Julian to interview him for TPM. He’s a Name philosopher of religion, yeah.
Dave Sucher writes:
Is this Swinburne guy sufficiently important to justify so much of our attention?
Exactly.
Swinburne is so bad he’s good. My suspicion is that he has been invented by OB and JS for our amusement.
Or perhaps Satan invented him to turn us off God.
Can anybody prove the existence of Swinburne?
Huh. That might be plausible if it weren’t for Google, and Amazon, and the like.
I can conceive of a Swinburne, with all the attributes of Swinburne, but while I concede his existence is not logically necessary his emiritusness implies a metaphysically necessary ‘Swinburness’ existing either within or without ‘Oxford’.
There’s a Peanuts cartoon where Lucy explains to Charlie Brown that adversity is important because it builds character and it helps prepare you for things later in life. Charlie Brown protests, asking what sort of things his current adversity could possibly be preparing him for. Lucy’s answer: more adversity.
Don & Cathal
A non-existent Swinburne philosopher would be definitely inferior to a Swinburne philosopher whose existence I can conceive of.
Since Swinburne’s philosophy is clearly inferior, I conclude he does not exist.
QED
“Lucy’s answer: more adversity.”
That’s perfect.
Good post, but my only question is how come tthe man hasn’t spontaneously committed suicide after reading it; you did email him and ask him to join in, I hope?
FWIW I think you misrepresent the theological positon in a small, unimportant way.
We star from the goodness of God, and free will for people (coupled with perfect foreknowledge of the outcomes I guess). This pilpul is how we try to reconcile immovable objects and unstoppable forces; the only way is to bite bullets or execute U-turns.
The actual position is not that the evil was set up by God but is the outcome of freedom accorded to people, after their bad choices.
The fact of suffering continuing despite faith and prayer and sacrifice is a stumper, if you insist on a magical world where doing what you think aught to be sufficient requires god to intervene.
(In my observation, he doesn’t.)
Then in that position of continuing suffering you are hit with the idea that if he is good, and powerful, and loving he must have a reason in mind that is for our individual good. The passages you pick on explicate that a bit.
And my point is: humans are not brains on sticks, even if rationality brings you closer to perfection.
Forgive them; they accomodate their beliefs with bad logic. It could be worse, they could be using executions to create utopia like some others we could name.
BTW OB, I am impressed that the passages you pick beatifully expose the deepest contradictions for discussion. Its like grabbing the picture of Elmer Fudd two steps past the end of the diving board, just before he looks down and says ‘Oh, wats!’
Loving god and suffering?Firstly if there is a god we would no idea about whether he views us as individuals or looks at us as a group,we would also have no idea about the time frame that his plan may take( the reason for todays suffering could maybee only become clear a 1,000 years from now!) so the fact that the world has some prety crapy things happening niether proves nor disproves his existance.
Richard,
I am afraid that’s a ridiculous argument: the god you describe is not the one we are urged to believe in, here. When it comes to a god of love and compassion, a personnal deity taking interest in each and every one of us, “the fact that the world has some pretty crappy things happening” is a big objection. This is at the heart of Swinburne’s argument: he is trying to reconcile the existence of a loving god with that of human sufferings.
I wouldn’t care if people were to believe -however mistakenly- in the kind of god you describe, because such a deity wouldn’t make demands of us; but man, that’s not exactly the case, is it?
snicker. Thanks, Chris – that’s a very flattering description.
How difficult can it be to reconcile,a loving god(like a loving father)would probably only wish to smooth the path for his chrildren not walk in front of them casting rose petals!
Problem with that, Richard, is I think it is applicable to the stubbed-toe or being-dumped kind of “evil” – but not to the much more significant evil wrought by evolution and natural selection – from cystic fibrosis to the human botfly; and not to the evil wrought by other people. Those do, I believe, place restrictions on the kind of Gods that can be coherently posited in theism.
You make a fair point re natural selection(although its a stretch to call disease and some aspects of evolution evils)but for evils wrought by mankind they can be seen as having a purpose eg.as churchhill said of w.w.2 never has mankind stooped so low to reach so high.Some of our greatest triumphs have come from adversity.
Yes I know the holocaust is a tricky one!