God, capriciousness and the 1 percent

The writer over at Skepticism First has proposed an interesting argument against the existence of God by supposing that we imagine a world in which Hurricane Katrina in all its fury actually killed 1 percent fewer people. This scenario would mean, in turn, that 1 percent fewer people suffered death in the natural disaster, family members did not have to go through the grieving process, etc. Also, in this scenario, the writer supposes that we would offer more or less the same emergency response in assisting the victims if the storm killed 1 percent fewer people.

Evil

In essence, a world in which Katrina is slightly less severe would be a better world than our own, or as the writer terms it, “same goodness, less badness:”

God can’t be in the business of acting arbitrarily – he must have a justifying reason for whatever he does. While there’d be a justifying reason to create W1 over the actual world (same goodness, less badness), there’s no justifying reason at all to create the actual world over W1 (same goodness, more badness).

Thus, if God existed, he would have created W1 instead of the actual world. Clearly this is not the case, therefore, God does not exist.

I obviously agree with the main premise lurking behind this argument, that the existence of intense and widespread suffering, and even evil, under the nose of a benevolent deity provides a compelling case against God. But if I may play the devil’s advocate for a minute, God can’t be in the business of acting arbitrarily so far as we know based on the God presented to us by believers. In their characterization of God, he is, of course, all loving, all just, all knowing, all powerful and always in control. Despite the fact that these attributes reduce God to nothing more than a paradox, believers would have us believe God is consistent and his actions make sense, even if it is out of our capacity to understand them.

But there is little to suggest that God is anything but capricious. Although the writer doesn’t specify to which God he or she is referring, but the capriciousness applies to more or less any God as classically defined, especially to the God of the Bible.

Humans once thought ancient gods would wreak havoc on the Earth through famines and disease if they didn’t get their fair share of praise, worship and sacrifices. Ancient humans hopped from one foot to the other attempting to both please and understand the ways of their incomprehensible “God.” In mythology, Zeus turned a nymph named Chelone into a tortoise simply because she did not attend his marriage. Mythology is full of incidents in which gods are acting childishly and frivolously, meting out brutal punishments for what we would call the slightest offenses, for no other reason than that they could.

I don’t see the God of the Bible much differently. Under God’s watch, 42 children were mauled by a bear simply for insulting an old man about his bald head. God had Abraham march up a mountain and prepare to kill his son to prove a point about Abraham’s faith, although an omniscient God would have already known the man’s level of devotion. God acted in concert with Satan or some malevolent force to inflict unthinkable woe upon Job to, again, test his faith, when he would have already known. For reasons that still confound, God plucked Israel out of black obscurity as the chosen people, and more surprisingly, chose a backward and illiterate desert region to send his message to man, not China or more sophisticated parts of the world.

If we assume God exists in this world, he is routinely in the business of guiding doctors through complicated heart surgeries, saving the lives of affluent people who can afford the procedure and who have spent their lives gorged on excess and gluttony, while watching children with bone cancer rot away into oblivion. He saves some people from chronic diseases, while other patients and their families who may have prayed just as much, must learn a harsh lesson about his “mysterious ways.”

In theory, yes, God could have created W1 in which less people were killed in Katrina. But who’s to say we’re not living in W1, and W2, in which 1 percent more people died in the hurricane, was never created. God can, in theory, do a lot of things … or not. I would posit that it’s part of God’s very nature to act arbitrarily, and that in and of itself is a compelling case against God.

Read more here: Twin Earth and Soul-Making.