Saprophagous Proof

Philo, Evil and the Via Negative Proof of Deity

By John Taylor; 2008 Jan 17, 18 Sharaf, 164 BE

The following is an update of a paper I read at an undergraduate philosophy conference at SUNY Buffalo, on the 24th of February, 1991

The problem of suffering is one of the most often-mentioned objections that atheists raise against theist belief. For example, in Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" the skeptic Philo uses Greek deist presuppositions to divide and conquer two inconsistent Christian positions defended by Demea and Cleanthes. Philo asks how a good God can be in evidence when ostensible evil is so prevalent.

First of all, let us clarify what suffering is. Suffering is an exception to Philo's earlier assertion that "every event, before experience, is equally difficult and incomprehensible; and every event, after experience, is equally easy and intelligible." (David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hafner Publ., N.Y., 1963, pp. 52-3) The distressing fact is that we have no easier a time explaining why pain is necessary after it strikes than before. If anything, trauma and suffering of innocents are more difficult and incomprehensible after they occur than before. A reader of history often has more details than a reader of contemporary events in a newspaper. Thus atrocities such as Hitler's holocaust can be if anything more inexplicable than, say, the mass murders going on in contemporary conflicts.

Why does our understanding turn away from pain with such revulsion? If other experiences are comprehensible, why not this?

 Some conclude from our inadequacy to grasp the justification for evil that its very meaninglessness must have some meaning and use. These attempt to be empiricists without being reductionist, to combine the Via Affirmativa of faith with the Via Negative of skepticism. Such an approach is pivotal in my religion, the Baha'i Faith. We look at the existence of evil, incompleteness and imperfection and draw from it a combined theodicy and proof of deity.

"... on this dusty earth all humankind are suffering ...if a human life, with its spiritual being, were limited to this earthly span, then what would be the harvest of creation? Indeed, what would be the effects and outcomes of Divinity itself?" (Selected Writings, pp. 184-5)

 This approach has what might be called a saprophagous quality, meaning an organism that subsists on decaying matter. Suffering, poverty and death force us to reflect on why God allows imperfection and incompleteness to continue. Why is nature incomplete? Why do we feel uncomfortable in this world?

 Via negative proofs of deity are rooted in logic's demonstration of a proposition by denial of its opposite. As well, Descartes' Cogito, reasoning from the inadequacy of thought to an All-Sufficient God, is similar. I hope here to hint at how a Via Negative theodicy might answer Philo's objections.

 Philo's major premise is that it would be logically contradictory for God to be Good, Omnipotent and still permit evil. In fact, this contradiction is only one of many that arise in thinking about the divine. Divine, infinite reason induces "optical illusions" in finite logic. How can God be both just and compassionate? How are divine humility and grandeur reconciled? Or fear and love of God? Indeed, any divine quality taken in itself seems to shut out (and include) all the others. Theism assumes that what the mind comprehends is a reflection of its own limitations, not God's.

 Of Aristotle's three bases of causation: chance, logical necessity and will, theism is firmly committed to the third and highest of these. Everything devolves from the willed act of a Single Agent. This volitional cosmology pushes fate, suffering, explanations of the nature of the world, the soul, and the nature of life after death all permanently beyond grasp or rationalization.

 A willed order begins with God as the Sole and Only True Agent.

 "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." (Isa 45:7)

 Indeed a pure monotheist would regard a successful demonstration of the ontological and cosmological "proofs" of God to be rather the reverse, a contraindication that a God that transcends conception and the natural world exists. (Even Anselm, the popularizer in Europe of Avicenna's ontological proof, in Proslogion XV admits that God is not only that than which no greater can be conceived, but that God is "greater than can be conceived."

 It is true that good cannot do evil, so it must be the case that God produces types and degrees of good; inequality among creatures is a sign of divine ascendancy. "Whatever good befalls you, man, it is from God: and whatever ill from yourself." [Qu'ran 4:78-9]  Naturally the One Agent can give contrast by setting up opposition between direct and indirect action. The commonest symbol for this in scripture is the "right" and "left hand" of God. Though both come from God, and are therefore essentially a game, scripture repeatedly warns that He plays with a serious purpose:

 "It was not in sport that we created the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them. We created them to reveal the truth." (Qu'ran 44:40)

 Throughout the Dialogues, Hume subtly shifts theists away from home ground, a world governed by a willed order. Philo points out that historically Christian divines exaggerated suffering but now that people are more educated and sophisticated they have to backtrack and say life is not so bad after all. (Dialogues, pp. 80-1) He implies that faith is nothing more than a convenient tool used by religious leaders for wielding power over the unwashed masses. The fact that any belief system plays a corrupt role in human power structures says much about the quality of religion, but it does not affect the question of God's existence one way or the other.

 Philo concedes in Book XI that even if God somehow transcended the contradictions, the fact of evil in this narrow worldly life does not necessarily mean that the sum total of existence will be any different. This begs the fundamental question at issue: is reality essentially the natural world? Is truth restricted to a dead thing about which it is useless to hypothesize? Is there more to it? Could it not be a consciously willed sign or gesture designed for us to negotiate with and draw meaning from?

 If the world is a conscious attempt by the Creator to communicate a message, information theory is relevant. Briefly, cybernetics shows that meaning depends on variance from expectations. Communication is largely concerned with determining whether input is a code or only random noise. In determining the probabilities, the amount of data is less important than how surprising it is.

 Thus if the universe was created to reveal the truth, to take a reductionist stance to it is to miss its point entirely. To witness inherent human limitations with indifference is to be an agnostic; to be surprised and react to the mysteries of suffering and sacrifice with wonder is to understand its whole meaning. It is for this reason that religion regards bland complacency, not gross pain and evil, as its primary adversary. To be blasé is to miss the goal of life. Apathy permits evil to propagate like a virus.

 Earlier, Philo had argued successfully that experience with human design is incommensurable with cosmogony, which is unique. Addressing the moral realm, though, he is happy  to beg the question whether the moral condition of the creator is of the same logical type. Philo assumes, as Nelson Pike points out (in, Hick, John H., Philosophy of Religion, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1983, p. 101) that there can never be a morally sufficient reason for allowing suffering. Philo's error can be shown with game theory. Imagine these possibilities:

 (1) Everything in the universe is overflowing with sympathy, love and happiness, including yourself. You feel an itch and go to scratch it. All other beings feel so much concern and suspense for your predicament that their happiness is ruined. Sympathy tears all apart and everything dies.

 (2) Everything in the universe is overflowing with pain, suffering and division, including a demon in the nether regions of hell. He thinks, "Well, at least I'm not the only one." His pain lessens briefly and minutely. This moment of Schadenfreude, unworthy as it is, is deemed sufficient to redeem the world.

 Both (1) and (2) qualify as valid outcomes of games with different rules for resolution. If the extremes are valid, so is everything between them. A game is still playable, one might even say only playable, when the players know no rationale for the rules. Players may like or dislike playing but can deduce from it nothing directly about the One who devised the game.

 Philo assumes that suffering and the rules of morality are somehow outside the game. Were this so it would all be pointless, the sort of "sport" against which the Qu'ran warns. Let us look at two more illustrations from education and entertainment.

 In school a bad teacher is held responsible if he fails most of his students. But a teacher who never failed anybody would be suspect: was his test difficult enough to challenge the students? For these reasons even the best teachers are expected to fail, without reproach, a percentage of their students. Nor do the failed students lose. Having played, they now know they must work harder or that their abilities lean elsewhere.

 In a play the enjoyment of the audience would be ruined if the actors whose characters die really were to be killed. Nor is the playwright put on trial for characters murdered. The suspension of disbelief requires that the spectacle play itself out. Only then, when the object and its particular rules are understood, can one say whether the play is good or bad. The object of the activity is catharsis, a satisfactory resolution, regardless of all external considerations. The play is the thing, not the whim of actor or audience as to what could be better, or whether any event is right or wrong.

 The best moves in the best of all possible games would in the end satisfy winners and losers, winners for playing well, and losers for having to admit that they were fairly treated and lost fair and square because of their own efforts, or lack thereof. The very attempt to understand suffering in life is surely an important part of playing the game well.

 Thus whether life is a lesson (1) or a pageant (2), if suffering and other deficits could be grasped too soon, while play was still going on, it would diminish rather than increase the sum total of meaning and enjoyment. To recognize and follow the ultimate message is to win, whether a game of type (1) or (2) is used to convey it.

 Everything depends upon the prior supposition that a message is somewhere to be found.

 Needless to say, when the proponents of religion themselves misunderstand the object of the game, confusion results. Cleanthes and Demea border on blasphemy when they attempt to answer whether the world has too few or too many evils. The One True Agent does only good! Religion does not and should not attempt to explain the formal cause of every move and rule in the game of life. In matters of faith the "why" is relevant, not the "how" of science.

 Indeed if God is infinite it is fair to suppose that many important things will never be understood (via negative) no matter how long we play the game. But it is also reasonable to assume that God is just and gives us enough understanding to play the game and, with His aid, win it (Via Affirmativa). The Via Negative does not disagree with Philo that nature is a mindless mass of blind growth. But it does not stop with this observation, it seeks to answer why it is that nature should be incomplete.

 Surely God as builder is all the more creative and worthy of veneration because He uses imperfect material to accomplish His ends.

 Remember, sociologists define an expert as someone who seeks the greatest challenge to test his or her skill. Michelangelo proved consummate mastery of sculpture by carving his David out of a block of marble that other artists had thrown away and deemed unworkable. If a faulty piece of marble is difficult to shape, how much more is a willfully recalcitrant person!

 Scripture is replete with explanations to the question: If all are servants to the One True Agent, why does it so often happen that wrongdoers and backsliders, as well as believers, still end up carrying out the divine purpose? The Qu'ran says the "hand of God is above their hands," [48:10] and the Bible, "The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil." [Prov 16:4]  Another passage from Qur'an uses an industrial parable about processes that "bear a swelling foam," such as iron smelting or overflowing streams,

 "The scum is cast away, but that which is of use to man remains behind. Are the blind and seeing alike? Does darkness resemble the light?" (13:16)

 The Christian analogue is agricultural, Christ is the vine, God the gardener. "Every barren branch of mine he cuts away; and every fruiting branch he cleans, to make it more fruitful still." (John 15:1-5) Asked whose fault it was a that a certain man became blind, Jesus answered that it was so that God's will "might be perfected in him." Later, cured of the ailment, the man is shocked that others do not understand the significance of what he witnessed (John 9:30-2).

 This leads to a shocking consequence of via negative, that often the greater the suffering the greater the benefit. The "foundations of the world were discovered at the rebuking of the Lord." (II Sam 22:16) If an imperfect being wishes to develop in the direction of perfection it must suffer; if a free being wishes to perfect itself, it must suffer voluntarily. Theists often shy away from this demanding conclusion. The common objection is, `if you do better to suffer, would not a torturer then be doing you a favor?' This ignores the "of the Lord," and leaves only `the rebuking.' Suffering works for good through the "natural" processes of purification that arise out of divine providence. Thus the highly "surprising" nature of the message forces one to have different expectations, and then to rewrite and reform the rules which one makes up for relationships to others.

 Another objection raised was Philo's Reductio Ad Absurdam that any number of other equally valid arguments can be imagined for divine causation in the world. Recently Michael Martin (Michael Martin, A Theistic Inductive Argument from Evil?, Philosophy of Religion, 22:81-87-87 (1987)) has used this strategy to refute an argument for God from evil. He demonstrates that the same induction that supposedly proves that God permits evil can also prove that fairies and fairy killers exist.

 An answer to Philo's objection rests in religious methodology, which sets up a framework for spiritual sifting within and among religions. Only insofar as it influences our human response to God's Will does religion worry about causation. Religion is primarily concerned with meaning, not explanation, and it thrives only as long as it usefully and economically conveys meaning to large numbers of people.

 To conclude, Demea and Cleanthes did not fully understand the common ground between them. If they had grasped Via Negative theodicy they could have taken a more forceful strategy for their confrontation with Philo.