I wanted to try my hand at a shorter style article on a recent thought I had about God that also featured in a dialogue I had with a friend of mine. I’m not a theist, but I do consider the discussion around the existence of God interesting.
Two Beliefs
Some theists hold the following two beliefs:1
God must have good justificatory reasons in allowing for the existence of evils in the world.
→ i.e. not performing easy rescues, causing/allowing natural disasters to occur, etc.God can violate the laws of logic
→ i.e. the law of non-contradiction.2
Aside from the good reasons that already exist to reject both beliefs,3 I think there is a tension that we can further draw upon. Namely that of God being able to create a world without any evils.
The issue comes into focus when we consider how theodicies work. For example, God gave moral agents the capacity to act wickedly, else it would have interfered with our free will.4 Other cases might be a little more mysterious, as in instances where God could have performed an easy rescue, but refrained. For example, people drown all the time and God could have saved them, yet he doesn’t. I think the right move to make here for a theist would be to suggest that if God does indeed exist,5 then he must have a good enough reason to refrain. To refrain from performing an easy rescue without justification–to refrain from some act you have strong moral reason to commit without just reason–would be to act wrongfully. This I take to be entirely uncontroversial. In short, theodicies amount to an effort to explain what justificatory reasons might exist that explain why God (given his nature) allows for various evils in the world.
But suppose God could break the law of non-contradiction. Then it seems God could make these interventions and avoid the evil entailments–even if such evil entailments followed by necessity of God’s actions. Let’s make this a little more concrete:
Suppose that a child is drowning in a river and only God can save her. Let’s suppose that God refrains from saving them because terrible consequences would necessarily occur. But for God, this is (apparently) no problem as he can save the child, whilst avoiding those necessary consequences. So, given his nature, he cannot refrain. But since the child drowns (and indeed many do) God couldn’t exist–otherwise she (and all the rest) would have been saved.
In short: God can rid the world of all evils and avoid all consequences of intervening. But he doesn’t. Even if this is the best possible world,6 it’s certainly not a world free of all justified evils.7 Even if no evils like this existed whatsoever the problem persists. Perhaps agents are not obligated to perform easy rescues, thus refraining from doing so requires no justification. We would be left to ask why we think of such inactions as wicked. Perhaps we are just mistaken? If so, God would be allowing for epistemic evils. So it seems there is an insurmountable problem for those who wish to hold onto the two beliefs mentioned prior.
The Argument from Justificatory Evils
As my argument mainly focuses on the law of non-contradiction, I will only refer to that law of logic. For the sake of brevity I will refer to it as the LNC.
If God can break the LNC, then God has no justificatory reasons for allowing evils to exist in the world–since God could prevent even the necessary entailments of his actions that would be worse than the allowing of certain evils.
But, God must have justificatory reasons for allowing evils to exist in the world–else God acts unjustly, but God can’t act unjustly!
So, God cannot break the LNC.
Just whilst being unjust?
It might be claimed that if God can break the LNC, then he can be perfectly just in (letting unjust things occur/committing injustice). I suppose this serves me right for trying to argue logically against an illogical concept. Though this should be cold comfort for the theist, as it would need to buy into the view that God is evil (and completely not evil).
But I think that just lends further credence to the view that God couldn’t break the LNC. In any case, it would demonstrate that the existence of God is logically impossible and incoherent. Though I think this entailment already follows from the idea that God could break the LNC. If I were a theist, I would stay clear of the view that God needn’t be beholden to logic.
I must emphasise the word “some”.
The law of non-contradiction (LNC) refers to the principle that there are no (and can be no) true contradictions. It cannot be true that A and ~A. If there are two propositions that directly contradict each other, they cannot both be true.
For example, the first belief seems to entail that this is the best possible world. It couldn’t be better than it is, otherwise God allowed something bad to happen without adequate justification. But it’s not clear at all how this could be such a world. Although, there is (I think) much stronger reason to reject belief two, given that it would make the concept of God logically incoherent (thus incapable of being true). i.e. God could lift a rock he couldn’t lift.
I’m going to just assume this is true.
All loving, all knowing, all present and all good creator of the universe.
Something incredibly hard to accept, even on it’s own.
Acts that would ordinarily wrong without such justification.