Requiem for China's One-Child Policy

TOM FLYNN: Requiem for China’s One-Child Policy

CELEBRATING REASON AND HUMANITY February/March 2016 Vol. 36 No.2

Greta Christina | Faisal Saeed Al Mutar | Ed Buckner and Mandisa Thomas 80% 1.5 BWR PD F/M 08 Robert M. Price | Edd Doerr | Stephanie Savage

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The mission of the Center for Inquiry is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values. The Center for Inquiry is a supporting organization of the Council for Secular Humanism, publisher of Free Inquiry. February/March 2016 Vol. 36 No.2

CELEBRATING REASON AND HUMANITY

ATHEODICY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF GOD 28 Auschwitz and Evil: My Experience 13 Introduction Growing Up as the Son of a Survivor Tom Flynn Edward Tabash 14 Who’s Afraid of the 32 Why John Hick’s Solution to the Problem of Big Bad Theodicy Riddle? Evil Makes God Monstrous Susan Jacoby Shadia B. Drury 18 Evil God and Mirror Theodicies 36 Is One Person’s Theodicy Another’s Stephen Law Anthropodicy? Preliminary Considerations 21 Evil Gods and Evil Men: Anthony B. Pinn Some Limits in the Debate 40 Epilogue David Koepsell Judy Walker and Tom Flynn 25 Is It Wrong to Accept God’s Gift of Salvation? James A. Metzger

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS REVIEWS 4 China’s One-Child Policy: A Requiem 49 Doerr's Way 64 Move Upstream: A Call to Tom Flynn Public Education under Siege, Part 2 Solve Overpopulation

Edd Doerr by Karen I. Shragg

Reviewed by Tom Flynn OP-EDS 51 Great Minds 7 A Response to an Almost Good H. L. Mencken: but Limited and Very Troubling Scourge of the Booboisie POEM Argument against Trigger Warnings Dale DeBakcsy 63 An Abandoned Church Greta Christina 55 High Heresy by Stephen Van Eck 8 The Syrian Refugee Crisis and the Trojan Horde Need for Political Solutions Robert Price Faisal Saeed Al Mutar 57 The Humanist Soapbox 9 Should Atheist and Humanist Religion: Private Matter Organizations Broaden Their Purpose? or Public Policy? Ed Buckner and Mandisa Thomas Steve Davidson

LOOKING BACK 59 Living Without Religion 11 Sympathy for the Devil-Believers Stephanie Savage

LETTERS 61 The Faith I Left Behind 12 A Life of Love, Religion, and Science Gordon E. Hunter Editor Thomas W. Flynn Managing Editor Andrea Szalanski Tom Flynn Editorial Columnists Ophelia Benson, Russell Blackford, Greta Christina, Edd Doerr, Shadia B. Drury, Nat Hentoff, Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, Mark Rubinstein

Senior Editors Bill Cooke, Richard Dawkins, Edd Doerr, James A. Haught, Jim Herrick, Ronald A. Lindsay, Taslima Nasrin

Contributing Editors Roy P. Fairfield, Charles Faulkner, Levi Fragell, Adolf Grünbaum, China’s One-Child Policy: Marvin Kohl, Lee Nisbet

Assistant Editors Julia Lavarnway A Requiem Nicole Scott Literary Editor Cheryl Quimba Permissions Editor Julia Lavarnway Art Director Christopher S. Fix Production Paul E. Loynes Sr.

Center for Inquiry Inc. n October 29, 2015, the that the one-child policy prevented 400 Chair Edward Tabash Chinese Communist Party million births. R. Elisabeth Cornwell Board of Directors ended its one-child policy. Free Inquiry Senior Editor Vern L. Brian Engler For thirty-six years that pol- Kendrick Frazier O Bullough and his wife, FI Contributing Barry A. Kosmin icy had been the planet’s most aggres- Editor Bonnie Bullough, toured China Leonard Tramiel sive, longest-running campaign against in 1983, just four years after the one- Honorary: Rebecca Newberger overpopulation. It was also a human- child policy began. “We have to admire Goldstein rights nightmare, marked by forced the Chinese for their determination Susan Jacoby to bring their growth rate under con- Lawrence Krauss sterilizations and compulsory abortions. Especially in rural areas, women trol,” they wrote in Free Inquiry (Winter Chief Executive Officer Ronald A. Lindsay 1983/84). The Bulloughs frankly dis- Director, Campus and Community Programs Debbie Goddard cussed the policy’s dark side but also Director, African Americans recognized the existential danger if for Humanism Debbie Goddard “I mourn the one-child policy’s China did nothing to limit population Director of passing—not because I’m con- growth. “We wish that some of the Development Martina Fern more drastic forms of persuasion did fident it worked but because Director of Libraries Timothy Binga not have to be used,” they concluded, Communications Director Paul Fidalgo of the reasons why China’s “but we have no viable alternatives to Database Manager Jacalyn Mohr Communist leadership appar- recommend.” Reactions to the policy’s suspen- Webmaster Matthew Licata ently abandoned it.” sion have been varied. Joe Bish of the Staff Pat Beauchamp, Ed Beck, Melissa Braun, Shirley Population Media Center commented, Brown, Eric Chinchón, “I imagine many who are concerned Lauren Foster, Roe Giambrone, Nora Hurley, about human overshoot feel this is the Paul Paulin, Michael Rupp, faced immense social pressures and final nail in the global demographic Anthony Santa Lucia, devastating fines if they had a for- Diane Tobin, Vance Vigrass coffin.” Count me among that group. I bidden second or third child. Finally, mourn the one-child policy’s passing— Council for Secular Humanism strong cultural preference for male chil- not because I’m confident it worked Executive Director Thomas W. Flynn dren led to a troubling sex imbalance, but because of the reasons why China’s with as few as 85 girls born per 100 Communist leadership apparently aban- males. That said, China has claimed doned it. I’ll get back to that.

4 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org Was the One-Child Policy Effective? way behind.” The “time bomb” Sudworth Despite China’s claims, there is reason to describes is demographic inversion, the suspect that the one-child policy did not situation in which each successive gen- accomplish all that much. Nobel laureate eration is smaller than the one before it. Chinese leadership’s terror in the face of Free Inquiry (ISSN 0272-0701) is published bimonthly by the Center for Amartya Sen notes that China’s fertility Inquiry in association with the Council for Secular Humanism, P.O. Box rate had begun plummeting fully a de- it, coupled with a likely erroneous belief 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Phone (716) 636-7571. Fax (716) 636- that the one-child policy had brought 1733. Copyright ©2015 by the Center for Inquiry and the Council for cade before the one-child policy began, Secular Humanism. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be it about, are the reasons the policy was reproduced without permission of the publisher. Periodicals postage paid and it kept doing so. On Sen’s view, abandoned. (Told you I’d get back to at Buffalo, N.Y., and at additional mailing offices. National distribution the most likely cause of this decline was by Disticor. Free Inquiry is indexed in Philosophers’ Index. Printed in that.) But demographic inversion is not the United States. Postmaster: Send address changes to Free Inquiry, not the one-child policy but rather the a time bomb. Much the contrary, it may P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Opinions expressed do not development widely credited for stun- necessarily reflect the views of the editors or publisher. No one speaks be humanity’s sole hope for a sustainable on behalf of the Council for Secular Humanism unless expressly stated. ning fertility decreases worldwide—a future in centuries to come. development no planner saw coming TO SUBSCRIBE OR RENEW Lest we forget, planet Earth is over- Call toll-free 800-458-1366 (have credit card handy). in 1978—ongoing improvements in the populated. As I write, it has 7.3 bil- Internet: www.secularhumanism.org. education and social empowerment of lion people. Even if national birthrates Mail: Free Inquiry, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. women. Subscription rates: $35.00 for one year, $58.00 for two years, continue to decline across much of $84.00 for three years. Foreign orders add $10 per year for the world, United Nations estimates surface mail (Canada and Mexico); $14 per year outside North America. Send U.S. funds drawn on a U.S. bank; American Chinese Fertility, 1968–Present suggest we’re still on track for world Express, Discover, MasterCard, or Visa are preferred. population to peak later in this century Single issues: $5.95 each. Shipping is by surface mail in U.S. Year 1968 1978 Present somewhere between 11 and 17 billion (included). For single issues outside U.S.: Canada 1–$3.05; 2–3 $5.25; 4–6 $8.00. Other foreign: 1–$6.30; 2–3 $11.40; One-child policy people. 4–6 $17.00. introduced CHANGE OF ADDRESS Fertility Rate 5.87 2.98 1.67 Mail changes to Free Inquiry, ATTN: Change of Address, P.O. (births per Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. woman) Call Customer Service: 716-636-7571, ext. 200. Source: New York Times E-mail: [email protected].

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city residents, in particular, feel strongly ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS that they can’t afford more than one Complete submission guidelines can be found on the web at child. The Population Reference Bureau www.secularhumanism.org/fi/details.html. Requests for mailed guidelines and article submissions should be estimates that by 2050, the end of addressed to: Article Submissions, ATTN: Tom Flynn, Free Inquiry, the one-child policy will result in only P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. 23 million more births, an infinitesimal LETTERS TO THE EDITOR difference. Send submissions to Letters Editor, Free Inquiry, P.O. Box 664, Here’s another statistic: most pop- Amherst, NY 14226-0664 or e-mail aszalanski@center ulation specialists think that the larg- forinquiry.net. If the One-Child Policy Wasn’t Working, est number of humans our planet can For letters intended for publication, please include name, address Why Mourn Its Loss? (including city and state), and daytime telephone number (for support sustainably is around two bil- verification purposes only). Letters should be 300 words or fewer BBC correspondent John Sudworth lion, maybe three tops. And that’s if and pertain to previous Free Inquiry articles. toured Rudong, a county in eastern Ji- most humans live like Europeans, with The mission of the Council for Secular Humanism is to angsu province noted for strict enforce- advocate and defend a nonreligious life stance rooted far smaller consumption and emis- in science, naturalistic philosophy, and humanist ethics ment of the one-child policy. Today, sion footprints than Americans take and to serve and support adherents of that life stance. Sudworth noted, “about 30 percent of for granted. To get there from here, the population is . . . over the age of we’d need to reduce human numbers fifty—a demographic time bomb that roughly threefold. To get there from holds up a terrifying spectre of rising where we’ll almost certainly be when social costs and falling worker numbers population crests, we’ll need more like to a wider country that is just a little a four- to sixfold reduction.

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 5 To be clear, I’m not talking about dramatically reduced birthrates. Places a Manhattan Project–scale skunkworks slower growth. I’m talking about sub- such as Spain, Italy, and Singapore now staffed by top economists, demogra- stantial shrinkage—many, many fewer have lower birthrates than China has phers, technologists, and other experts people. If we don’t figure out how achieved. Yet every time a country or tasked with figuring out how a consis- to accomplish this in a humane and region edges close to real shrinkage, tently shrinking society can function controlled way—and on a timescale of leaders panic. “We won’t have enough smoothly. decades, not centuries—the forces of workers!” “Who will pay to care for the So far, every national leadership nature will likely do it on their timeta- old and infirm?” “We’ll lose competi- confronted with the real possibility ble and in a way that is neither humane tiveness.” “We’ll be helpless to defend of population shrinkage has quailed. China is only the latest. If no one finds nor controlled. our territory.” a way to break that pattern, we’ll just So back to China and its demo- The thing that made me saddest? Rudong has adopted the same disas- keep consuming in our teeming billions graphic inversion. In places such as trous policy as some European countries, until our world can no longer support Rudong, it is said that the old are about offering young couples generous cash us—or until resource maldistribution, to outnumber the young. Retirees will incentives to have additional children. famine, and disease start to bring our soon outnumber workers, while work- And that’s the core of the tragedy. Not numbers down in far more brutal ways ers will outnumber children. That’s even China—bar none, the nation most than we would ever have chosen for awful! But wait . . . that’s what happens able and willing to engage in social ourselves. when you set out to roll back overpopu engineering on a vast, even oppres- China’s policy change deserves its lation. And it’s a good thing. sive scale—has a plan for managing requiem. But if we don’t learn from it, demographic inversion. The mere pros- the requiem for humanity may follow pect of it made China’s leaders tremble shortly. and hastily change course. Though if Further Reading Amartya Sen is right, dropping the one- Bish, Joe. 2015.“‘One Couple, Two Children’— child policy will not restore fertility and China’s One Child Policy Is Now History.” demographic inversion will continue all Population Media Center, October 30. the same. It will be interesting to see Buckley, Chris. 2015. “China Approves Two- “. . . Demographic inversion how China’s leaders respond to that. Child Policy to Help Economy.” New York Times, October 30. is not a time bomb. . . . In FI’s December 2007/January Bullough, Vern and Bonnie. “Population Con 2008 issue, I wrote: “In my view, we It may be humanity’s sole trol vs. Freedom in China.” Free Inquiry, desperately need to replace today’s Winter 1983/84. hope for a sustainable future.” outmoded, growth-dependent eco- Flynn, Tom. 2015. “Overpopulation, Immigra nomic and political structures with tion, and the Human Future.” Free Inquiry, June/July. shrinkage-friendly . . . successors. Yet, ———. “Beyond Ponzi Economics.” Free Inquiry, I’ve seen little evidence that the social December 2007/January 2008. sciences are rising to this challenge. Population Reference Bureau. 2015. “China Can we develop alternative structures Abandons One-Child Policy.” October. Ac that don’t demand the lubrication of cessed November 4, 2015 at http://www. prb.org/Publications/Articles/2015/ continual growth but can flourish even china-ends-onechild-policy.aspx. while contracting? Can we create them If we’re ever going to get from an Sen, Amartya. 2015. “China’s Enlightenment in time? Is anybody working on this?” Moment.” New York Times, November 2. unsustainable world of seven-plus bil- In the June/July 2015 issue, I reported Shragg, Karen I. 2015. Move Upstream: A Call lion people—much less a near-future more hopefully on research aimed at to Solve Overpopulation. Farmington, nightmare world of 11 or 17 billion Minn.: Freethought House. developing ways to structure a robust people—to the much smaller numbers Sudworth, John. 2015. “The ‘Model’ Example of economy during prolonged demo- China’s One Child Policy.” BBC News Blogs, that our little green planet can sus- graphic inversion. Obviously, much October 30. Accessed October 30, 2015, at tain long-term, then sustained demo- more work is needed; if anyone’s found http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china- blog-34664442. graphic inversion needs to be our goal. a magic bullet so far, clearly the Chinese Humanity will face many successive don’t know about it. (Given the Chinese generations during which each new government’s enthusiasm for hacking cohort is smaller than its predecessor. and its cavalier approach toward intel- Tom Flynn is the editor of Free Inquiry and the That will be how we know we’re suc- lectual property, it’s a fair guess that executive director of the Council for Secular ceeding. what the Chinese don’t know about Humanism. What do we see instead? Across doesn’t exist.) If I were Warren Buffett the world, developed countries exhibit or Bill Gates, I’d tap my fortune to fund

6 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org Greta Christina OP-ED

A Response to an Almost Good but Limited and Very secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry PB Troubling Argument against Trigger Warnings

igh. best possible version of your oppo- limiting this content. There are compli- Okay—I’m talking about trigger nent’s arguments and even making cated and fraught debates over class- Swarnings again. Quick explanation them better. In this case, I’m going room content in academic settings, of context: In the October/November to start by assuming that all the facts including questions such as “Is the 2015 issue of Free Inquiry, I wrote a col- cited by Harley are factually correct potential trauma caused by this con- umn titled “Trigger Warning,” making and that none of them have been mis- tent worth the educational value?” “Is an analogy between trigger warnings represented, distorted, or taken out there other, equally good content on and spoiler alerts and arguing that it of context. (Given the many ways she the same topic that isn’t likely to trau- didn’t make much sense to accept the misrepresented what I wrote in my latter while vilifying the former. In the column, it’s entirely possible that this December 2015/January 2016 issue, isn’t the case—but if it isn’t, I’m not the Kristine Harley wrote a long response best person to respond, so I’ll leave it to (“Greta Christina’s ‘Trigger Warning’: A others to do that.) “. . . Harley’s argument about Response”), arguing that trigger warn- So let’s assume that everything changing or limiting traumatic ings were much more dangerous and Harley said in her essay is true and content in some academic set- problematic than I had represented— fair. It’s a reasonably good argument especially in academia. for why policies in academia about tings is irrelevant to the case for I acknowledge that I’m not an trigger warnings and content notes trigger warnings in general and academic, and, while I’ve read a fair should be more careful, more nuanced, to my column in particular.” amount about the trigger warning/ or otherwise better. It is, however, a content note debates on college and terrible argument for not using trigger university campuses, I’m not intimately warnings at all. The best summary I can familiar with the details of how they make of Harley’s argument is, “Trigger play out there. I’m much more familiar warnings sometimes get badly misused matize?” “If content is potentially trau- with the debates revolving around trig- in academia—therefore, they’re a slip- matizing for a significant number of ger warnings in traditional commercial pery slope, the arguments for them students, should they be given options publishing (newspapers, magazines, amount to hysteria, and nobody should for alternative content?” and “Who books, etc.), personal online platforms ever advocate for them.” I hope I don’t gets to decide?” While these debates (such as blogs, podcasts, and YouTube have to explain why this is a very bad are often related or similar to the ones videos), and social media. argument. about trigger warnings, they’re not So I’m going to steel-man this argu- If everything Harley says is true and the same. If, in fact, these debates ment. That’s the opposite of straw-man- fair, it’s a reasonably good argument are being conflated, then sure—I think ning, where people create the weakest for why the case for trigger warnings/ they should be kept separate. possible version of their opponent’s content notes in academia should not But by the same token, Harley’s arguments, including arguments their be extended into (a) excusing students argument about changing or limiting opponents never actually made. “Steel- from potentially traumatic classroom manning” means engaging with the content or (b) actually changing or (Continued on page 46)

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 7 Faisal Saeed Al Mutar OP-ED

The Syrian Refugee Crisis and the Need for Political Solutions

he refugee crisis has kept me awake require immediate attention. First, there are asylum seekers who for many nights since the terrorist It’s very hard to talk about the would literally be killed if they came Tattacks in Paris on November 13, refugee crisis without being lumped out as gay in their home countries, 2015. It matters to me on a personal in either with the apologist Far Left which makes their applications hard to level because I am a refugee myself or the xenophobic Far Right, which decline. Second, refugees can be vic- from Iraq and so are my parents. And can include whole countries such as tims and oppressors at the same time. I care about the lives of other refugees Christian-dominated Mexico. But some I am more than certain that most of and also about the security of my new people on the secular Left have raised the people who committed verbal or home, the United States. concerns that I think are very legiti- physical abuse against Rami have been One of the advantages that the mate. One is whether some of these oppressed or probably lost some mem- United States has over many other refugees will pose a threat to liberal bers of their families due to conflicts countries in managing the crisis is its values, such as freedom of speech in their own countries. Third and most location. The Middle East, Afghanistan, and the rights of women and LGBTs, important, refugees are not monolithic and Sub-Saharan Africa, where most of etc. A majority of these refugees do in their circumstances and want to the refugees are coming from, are far come from illiberal countries, a point escape their countries for many differ- Bill Maher has raised. They have faced ent reasons. years of religious indoctrination and There is one question that is hardly have known nothing but living under ever asked, especially when it comes to “. . . If a political solution can be dictatorships and in poverty, which will Syrian refugees: If a political solution found there . . . would many make it difficult for them to learn new can be found there that would make ways of looking at things. life for its citizens orderly and safe, refugees go back? For example, take the case of Rami would many refugees go back? And if And if a political solution is not Ktifan, a Syrian asylum-seeker who a political solution is not found, does found, does that mean that most made it to Germany and decided to that mean that eventually most Syrians come out as gay. “What followed over will try to leave the country? I think the Syrians will eventually try to the next several weeks, though, was answer to both questions is yes, which leave the country?” abuse—both verbal and physical—from stresses the need to find a political other refugees, including an attempt solution. to burn Ktifan’s feet in the middle of If there is one thing to be learned the night. The harassment ultimately about the Paris attacks by ISIS, it is from North America. Not so for Europe: became so severe that he and two that what happens in the Middle East Syria and Lebanon are just on the other other openly gay asylum seekers were doesn’t stay in the Middle East. One side of the Mediterranean Sea, and removed from the refugee center with of the biggest mistakes made by the Syria and Iraq are connected by land to the aid of a local gay activist group United States in its invasion of Iraq was Turkey, which is connected to Europe. and placed in separate accommoda- that it didn’t allow enough time for a The location of the United States gives tions across town,” according to the transitional nonsectarian government it more time to vet people who want Washington Post (October 23, 2015). to develop after the end of the rule of to immigrate there—it doesn’t have There are three things that can refugees washing up on its shores who be easily concluded from this story. (Continued on page 45)

8 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org Ed Buckner and Mandisa Thomas OP-ED

Should Atheist and Humanist Organizations Broaden Their Purpose?

here have been various well-mean- atheism and opposing religion is nar- diction) is right, as we certainly think he ing, thoughtful calls for atheist, row-minded or defective in some import- is, that America’s black communities have Tfreethought, and secular-human- ant way. been abominably served by the churches ist organizations in America to broaden We need secular humanists and athe- that have historically dominated many their focus. These have included general ists who care about atheism and religious of them, he is also right in implying that statements, new mission statements for liberty, whether or not they are uniform any community that relies too heavily organizations, editorials, and vague sug- in their preferences for solutions to soci- on any one set of institutions is ripe for gestions. The headline of Guardian com- ety’s ills not directly related to religion. disappointment and betrayal. None of mentator Adam Lee’s op-ed said it all: “It’s We don’t need racists, homophobes, sex- us can disentangle our political or irre- Time for Atheists to Stop Debating God’s ists, xenophobes, narcissists, or criminals ligious philosophies from our ethnicity, Existence and Decide What to Do About (child molesters, predators, etc.), but we It” (The Guardian, March 15, 2015). do need atheists who will intelligently We disagree with much that has been inform and support our atheist organi- said and written. We urge secular human- zations even if some contribute wealth, “The error that so many commit ists, atheists, and others to consider these wisdom, and labor to other nonatheist is to think that . . . an atheist or calls and to treat the ones making them organizations as well. And we certainly freethought organization that with great respect, but ultimately we need ongoing, mutually supportive and think they are mistaken. We think a major educating, allies from other organiza- wants to focus primarily on error underlies much of the analysis. It tions and other human-rights causes. promoting atheism and is an error that we’ve seen many other Most atheists we know agree with our opposing religion is nar- people commit, including people either stands on most of the issues mentioned or both of us love and respect. Among in the progressive laundry list above, but row-minded or defective these are people deeply concerned about not all. And even atheists or humanists in some important way.” gun violence, devoted to securing equal who agree with us that, for example, rights for gay men and women and trans- racism in America is a pervasive, danger- gendered people, horrified about the ous, destructive force don’t all agree on age, or regional identification; none of treatment of Native Americans, opposed how that problem should be addressed. us is understood simply as a “straight to the death penalty, concerned about That includes atheists of color. If secular white old Southern guy” (one of us) animal rights, convinced that single-payer organizations don’t commit themselves or “straight transplanted Yankee-to- health insurance is the only reasonable (as individual organizations) to solving all Southerner black woman” (the other) solution for America, and activists on problems and injustices, could it be that or something similar. Issues cannot be many other issues. they are trying to focus on what they do parsed into neat pigeonholes of religious The error that so many commit is best rather than spreading themselves vs. nonreligious, black vs. white, and so to think that if we all don’t attend to too thin? As J. T. Eberhard told one of us, on. And atheist organizations are wise and agree on all issues of concern, we “It may not make a great deal of sense, to focus not just on religion but also on really don’t care about our fellow human say, to criticize Doctors Without Borders the vicious harm that religious ideas can beings—and, by extension, that an athe- over how effectively the group works for do, such as promoting slavery, oppress- ist or freethought organization that gay marriage.” ing women, or encouraging murderous wants to focus primarily on promoting If filmmaker Jeremiah Camara (Contra (Continued on page 45)

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 9 Take action with us.

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35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry insisting that theirs are the only moral values. Secular humanists say there “. . . The [Secular Humanist] Declaration is a difference between a reflective states that secular humanists do not approach to the moral life and a mere believe it is moral to impose a religious indoctrination of an absolutist faith creed on young people before they are without an appreciation of alternative able to consent. Of course we believe points of view. . . .” in the right of parents to bring up their —Paul Kurtz, “The State Should Be children in their religious faith. But Neutral,” from Free Inquiry today religious fundamentalists are Volume 1, No. 2 (Spring 1981)

25 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “. . . [N]ow when our atheistic jour- nals and organizations are curtailing “. . . So the destinies of religion and their activity, intellectuals want to atheism depend greatly upon what oppose more energetically the torrents secular absolutes will be created in the of mysticism, sermons of superstition, course of the revolutionary renovation and occultism, that have begun to of [Soviet] society, and how quickly inundate our mass media. Of course, and affirmatively they will be assim- the return to state atheism, to the ilated by mass consciousness. . . . It’s infringement of believers’ rights, is very important to develop or maybe to out of the question. We need profes- rehabilitate atheism to restore its true sional scientific criticism of religious meaning and prestige. doctrines, of false messiahs and proph- “Nowadays atheism and atheists . . . ets, and of the activities of reactionary are accused of the mortal sins of per- clericalism.” secuting clergymen and believers, of —L. W. Mitrokhin, “Religion and destroying churches and monuments Secularization Under Perestroika of culture. The past, however, was more complicated and more tragic in in the USSR,” from Free Inquiry its own way. The majority of atheists of Volume 11, No. 1 (Winter the time were deceived in their sincere 1990/91) intentions; they were simply used for justification of criminal policy and they Editor’s Note: L. W. Mitrokhin, a former were put in the same trains bound for official of a Soviet state atheist insti prison used for clergymen. Thus, one tution and then-editor of the Soviet should note the difference between journal Social Science, delivered these atheism as a natural component of remarks at the August 1990 congress of world culture and its, so to say, his- the International Humanist and Ethical torical form, which has come through Union in Brussels, Belgium. Paul Kurtz Stalinist censorship, that perverted its and other representatives from the humanistic ethos beyond recognition. Council for Secular Humanism attended.

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 11 LETTERS

since his death. The English tions that the Muslims had the environment, therefore, has media in India are either con- slaughtered a cow or con- to be recognized as “a moral trolled or heavily influenced by law written into human nature sumed beef, it surely appears foreign powers, both Muslim itself” (UN speech, September and Christian. Proselytizing reli- that (contrary to Mr. Patel’s 25, 2015). gious institutions in the more protests) India’s Hindu tradi- Greg Hladky than forty Islamic countries and tion is as capable of produc- Cincinnati, Ohio more than fifty Christian coun- ing hatred and intolerance as tries all have eyes on India, Islam. The Indian secularists I seeking converts by buying academicians, politicians, musi- know are equally opposed to In “What Pope Francis Got cians, and almost anyone who either Hindu or Muslim sec- Right: Undergoing Ecological Conversion” (FI, December 2015/ can help their cause. tarianism, and that is also Free Now to Narendra Modi and January 2016), Hector Sierra Inquiry’s position. his leadership: the incident of writes: “I respect and admire 2002, where fifty-four helpless Pope Francis’s brave effort to travelers were roasted alive in Catholicism and Moral harness the power of religious a railway compartment, was conviction for the common planned by local Muslims, ready Modernity good” (my italics). Unfortunately, with kerosene with assistance his effort is not brave, his good What a delight it was to read Two Nations, from Pakistan. Modi was the not or far too common. While Daniel Maguire’s article, “Godless chief minister for barely two I endorse the attack on con- One Abyss Morals: The Challenge of Ivan months when this unprovoked sumerism, it is nothing novel. Karamazov” (FI, December 2015, Re: Tom Flynn’s article, “Two violence occurred. Moreover, overconsumption is January 2016). With a great Nations, One Abyss” (FI, Decem The media and the cen- only one of the horns of the sense of humor—missing from ber 2015/January 2016). I sub- tral government at that time beast responsible for the de so many books, articles, and scribe to Free Inquiry to get fresh were against Modi. Many of struction of nature, the other debates on faith—Maguire views of freethinkers, and so I the social activists got funding horn being human overpopu- zeroed in on the fallacies that was disappointed that the arti- from Arab countries to relay lation. However, mistaking the undermine faith in “God” and cle not only contains inaccura- fake manufactured stories of bull for a unicorn better fits the the premise of Dostoevsky’s cies but also recycled lies, not to horror. A classic example is biblical narrative, a mythology moral dilemma. Maguire elu- speak of Flynn’s biases. Teesta Setalwad, who got fund- ignorant of any form of natural cidates what Peter Boghossian I am Hindu and am coming from Arab countries and equilibrium. has been saying from a phil- pletely comfortable with my anti-Modi encouragement from Sierra regrets that the encyc- osophical point of view: faith identity because my faith allows the Congress party. She manu- lical Laudato Si “does not con- me to think freely, question factured horror stories, which as an epistemology is useless. template important actions everything, and practice it my were ultimately revealed by An imaginary god, or belief in such as a reduction in birth- own way, peacefully without her deputy just two years ago. that god, does not give us any rates.” Heavens, this is precisely harming anything or anyone You recycled the same manu- knowledge or new insights. We where the pontiff could have around. It is a naturalistic phi- factured stories in this article. can decide on our own what been brave (and useful): point losophy with a cosmic outlook It seems that to be recog- is right and wrong and have, at the disastrous effects of pop- and consequentialist ethical sys- nized by the West, all the sec- as Maguire pointed out, in the ulation growth, not instead of tem. People outside the faith ulars in India have to be anti- Universal Declaration of Human (as demagogically insinuated) have been abusing it for the last Hindu. So, for many years to Rights. but in addition to consumer- 2,500 years. come, you will hear the outcry I was pleased that Maguire ism. No, the most revolution- For the last 1,200 years, against minorities by Indian tied all of this talk of morals ary thing ever uttered by Jorge Islam has been slaughtering secularists, funded by sources into our treatment of “the good Bergoglio is that Catholics do us freethinkers. And Christians outside India. Earth.” However, for someone not have to multiply like rabbits. are busy deceitfully manipu- At the very least, I would who has “spent decades prod- M. V. van Mechelen ding America’s Catholic estab- lating Sanatan Dharma (called expect that Free Inquiry would Amsterdam, The Netherlands “Hinduism” today). Sometimes fact-check statements and lishment” (Tom Flynn, p. 17), I wonder if they have taken claims before it runs an article. Maguire missed giving Pope enough time to read with an Harilal L. Patel Francis some credit. In addition open mind the philosophical to his “moral mission against A thought experiment: what Monroeville, Pennsylvania traditions of Sanatan Dharma. poverty and militarism,” Francis consequences would obtain if India’s first prime minister, has used the power of the pulpit, the Vatican forged a binding Nehru, who never was a sec- Tom Flynn responds: and the United Nations General international agreement that prevented access to “artificial ularist, started appeasement Judging from recent events in Assembly, to address climate politics by courting Muslims change, calling for a “right of the birth control” and abortion and other minorities with guar- India, among them the killings environment” based on the idea worldwide, underwritten by anteed vote banks. His family of Muslims by Hindus on the that “we human beings are part has been practicing this ever strength of unproven allega- of the environment.” Defense of (Continued on page 65)

12 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org Atheodicy and the Impossibility of God A special feature section coedited by Anthony Pinn, Judy Walker, and Tom Flynn. Introduction Tom Flynn

heodicy is defined by Merriam-Webster as the “defense internment at Auschwitz exacted upon his mother and how of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the his childhood experiences of his mother’s brokenness helped Texistence of evil.” I won’t bother tracing the logic of the to solidify his own atheism. classical problem of evil here, as several of our contributing In “Why John Hick’s Solution to the Problem of Evil Makes writers do so with great skill in their essays that follow. What God Monstrous,” Free Inquiry columnist Shadia B. Drury I will do is twist theodicy back on itself like a Möbius strip, by explores a newer twist on theodicy attempted by an influ- way of introducing the concept of atheodicy. ential theologian, the late John Hick. Can God’s goodness If theodicy is defending God’s goodness and omnipo- and omnipotence be squared with the persistence of evil if tence—which believers in God do—then atheodicy is the we surmise that the function of evil in the world is to give marshaling of arguments rooted in the existence of evil to humans better opportunities to improve our characters? demonstrate that God as traditionally imagined does not or Drury is unconvinced. cannot exist. Atheodicy, therefore, is something that unbelievers do. In this issue, my coeditors and I have brought together six bravura practitioners of atheodicy. Following “. . . Atheodicy is the marshaling of their essays, coeditor Anthony Pinn offers an argument for arguments rooted in the existence of evil to taking the next step past atheodicy. Then in an extended epilogue, coeditor Judy Walker and I suggest that some athe- demonstrate that God as traditionally ists and humanists may be more ready to take that step than imagined does not or cannot exist.” others (among many other things). “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Theodicy Riddle?” by journalist and best-selling author Susan Jacoby sets the stage, offer- If I began this special section by twisting theodicy like a ing a wide-ranging survey of the problem of evil, unbelievers’ Möbius strip, public intellectual Anthony Pinn takes it further. responses to it, and their implications for the moral tenor of Think of warping theodicy into a Klein bottle and pouring life as people actually live it. Philosopher Stephen Law pres- it through itself. In “Is One Person’s Theodicy Another’s ents “Evil God and Mirror Theodicies,” the latest installment Anthropodicy?” he proposes the radically new concept of in his extended consideration of how the problem of evil anthropodicy —I’ll let him explain that in his own evocative changes—and how it does not—if we imagine a deity who words. Basically, Pinn is suggesting that it might be time for is not perfectly good but rather perfectly evil. Philosopher humanists and atheists to move beyond both theodicy and David Koepsell riffs further on this in “Evil Gods and Evil Men: atheodicy and to frame their moral questions in a new regis- Some Limits in the Debate,” remapping the problem of evil ter removed from old controversies about God. onto deities neither good nor evil but rather chillingly uncon- In a concluding epilogue, independent scholar Judy Walker cerned for humanity in the way of the Old Ones in the iconic and I ponder the troubled relationship between reason and fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. emotion in movement rhetoric, examine the differences The next two pieces drill deeper into the moral side of ath- between unbelievers who were never harmed by religion and eodicy. Former professor of religion James A. Metzger asks, those who have been, and suggest that “we, the damaged” “Is It Wrong to Accept God’s Gift of Salvation?” In a world of might feel that more work remains to be done before we set great evils where not all are saved, is it morally contemptible down the tools of atheodicy. to accept salvation for yourself when the gates of hell yawn As always, reader comments are welcome. wide to swallow many or most of your fellow humans? In “Auschwitz and Evil,” attorney and Center for Inquiry Chair Tom Flynn is the editor of Free Inquiry. Edward Tabash frankly discusses the horrifying toll that

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 13 ADVERTISEMENT

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Theodicy Riddle? Susan Jacoby

This light and darkness in our chaos join’d How beautiful the process of digestion! By what ingenious What shall divide? The God within the mind. methods the blood is poisoned so that the cancer shall have food! By what wonderful contrivances the entire system of Extremes in nature equal ends produce, man is made to pay tribute to this divine and charming cancer! In man they join to some mysterious use; . . . Think of the amount of thought it must have required to Though each by turns the other’s bound invade, invent a way by which the life of one man might be given to As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade, produce one cancer! Is it possible to look upon it and doubt And oft so mix, the diff’rence is too nice Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice. that there is design in the universe, and that the inventor of this wonderful cancer must be infinitely powerful, ingenious, Fools! Who from hence into the notion fall, and good?* That vice or virtue there is none at all. If white and black blend, soften, and unite Instead of wasting energy on the question of why a benev- A thousand ways, is there no black or white? olent and supposedly intelligent designer allows evil to flour- Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain; ish throughout creation, atheists have no choice but to focus ‘Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain. on the mixture of base and noble motives within their indi- —Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man: Epistle II” vidual, corporal beings and in the world at large. Pope’s “God within the mind” is, for the atheist, an indivisible combination bsent belief in an all-powerful, loving deity, there is no of good and evil. theodicy problem. This is one of the great blessings of Ironically, belief in an omnipotent deity devalues and over- atheism. A values human responsibility for evil—both the evil that we do I have never heard an atheist try to produce a tortuous and the evil done unto us. The same can be said of human explanation for the evil that humans do purposefully or for responsibility for good. The mechanism of devaluation is obvi- the indifferent assaults of nature. Nor do atheists and agnos- ous: if God knows all, sees all, and controls all, our petty efforts tics appear on camera after tornadoes and talk about how to make things turn out some other way mean nothing in a “blessed” they are that their houses escaped the path of the cosmic sense. storm while their neighbors’ houses were destroyed. This, too, Consider Yahweh’s warning when he orders Moses to is a blessing—for television audiences as well as for the dis- return to Egypt and liberate the Hebrew slaves: “When thou traught, unblessed neighbors. goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders Robert Green Ingersoll observed in the 1870s that believers before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will praised their god for nature’s glories while absolving him of harden his heart, and he shall not let the people go” (Exodus responsibility for nature’s horrors. “Did it ever occur to them 4:21). Do what I say, sayeth the Lord, but it won’t work until that a cancer is as beautiful as the development of the reddest I let it work. What could devalue any human achievement rose?” he asked, in a caustic tone that must have shocked even the staunchest nonbelievers in his audience. *From Robert Green Ingersoll’s lecture “The Gods.”

14 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org ATHEODICY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF GOD

more thoroughly? While God is hardening Pharaoh’s heart, not the nod of its good pleasure?. . . The weakness then of the Hebrews continue to endure the evils of slavery. Only infant limbs, not its will, is its innocence. Myself have seen and known even a baby envious; it could not speak, yet it turned when Yahweh decides to slay the Egyptian firstborn, and the pale and looked bitterly on its foster-brother. Who knows not masters get their taste of divinely wrought evil, is the divinely this? [Italics added.]* contingent leadership of Moses permitted to operate in the world and free the Israelites from bondage. A baby might look innocent to doting parents, but to Augustine Monotheistic belief—notably, the three Abrahamic reli- infants were only biding their time until they grew strong gions—also overvalues human responsibility for evil pre- enough (thanks to feedings on demand provided by the cisely because these faiths give their deity credit for good soft-hearted moms of late antiquity) to wreak real mayhem. outcomes, such as the liberation of Hebrew slaves, while Although babies did not possess the developed intellect and assigning blame for bad outcomes to humans alone. Even limbs to do wrong in the adult sense, the inclination to evil was when a religion’s sacred texts say explicitly that God is pull- already present. ing the strings, humans remain responsible for bringing evil Even absent belief in the lasting force of original sin, the on themselves. While Yahweh was handing down the first theodicy problem has naturally caused much more trouble version of the commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai, the boss knew what his chosen messenger did not—that the Israelites down below were carous- ing, blaspheming, and sacrificing to a golden calf. So who, really, was responsible for the sin of wor- shipping “false gods?” “Ironically, belief in an omnipotent deity devalues and The answer of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam overvalues human responsibility for evil.” to the theodicy issue is always “free will,” but only Christianity explicitly tries to reconcile the idea of free will with belief in an everlasting taint inflicted by original sin—which, of course, could never have happened without the connivance of God in the first place. (Space does not permit me to explore the differences between the story of the fateful events in the for monotheists than for polytheists or for those who, like Garden of Eden told by the Christian Bible, the Torah, and the the Enlightenment deists, believe in a being who set the Qur’an. Suffice it to say that only orthodox Christianity, from universe in motion but takes no active part in the affairs of the early church fathers through the Reformation, accepted men. Polytheism assigns different roles to different gods, who the notion of hereditary guilt embodied in that doggerel exhibit many of the failings of mortals in their quarrels with from The New England Primer that goes, “In Adam’s Fall / we one another as well as in their unpredictable attempts to sinned All.”) intervene in human affairs. The theodicy problem appears in its most extreme theo- Zeus, after all, is ultimately responsible for the Trojan logical form in the early patristic writings. No one summed up War, in that he sets in motion the Judgment of Paris, son the irreconcilable nature of the conflict better than Augustine of King Priam of Troy, who was charged with deciding of Hippo (354–430 CE), the author of the first tell-all memoir whether Aphrodite, Athena, or Hera would be the winner in Western literature, in his musings in Confessions on the evil of an Olympian beauty contest. Paris chose Aphrodite, who of babies: offered him Helen, the most beautiful of mortal women, as a bribe. (Helen was actually half mortal, because she was Who remindeth me of the sins of my infancy? . . . Who remindeth me? Doth not each little infant, in whom I see what of Zeus’s daughter by Leda, whom he had impregnated while myself I remember not? What then was my sin? Was it that I assuming the form of a swan.) Helen, wife of the Greek king hung upon the breast and cried? For should I now do so for Menelaus, then runs off to Troy with Paris, and we know how food suitable to my age, justly should I be laughed at and the story ends. reproved. What I did then was worthy of reproof; but since I could not understand reproof, custom and reason forbade In a capricious polytheistic world, where bad divine actions me to be reproved. For those habits, when grown, we root sometimes cancel each other out, there is no real need for the out and cast away. Now, no man, though he prunes, wittingly dogma of human free will or for the frequently articulated casts away what is good. Or was it then good, even for a while, monotheistic rationalization that “God must have his rea- to cry for what if given, would hurt? Bitterly to resent, that persons free, and its own elders, yea, the very authors of its *St. Augustine, Confessions of St. Augustine, translated by the Rev. Dr. birth, served it not? That many besides, wiser than it, obeyed E.B. Pusey in 1838 (London: Seeley and Co., 1909).

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 15 sons” that reason knows nothing of. If numerous gods can’t As the Charleston story was unfolding, I thought about a be counted on for benevolence and reliability—if they derive dear friend, a Holocaust survivor who had died three months pleasure from naughty impersonations of swans and celestial earlier. He once told me, “Do you know what the Holocaust beauty pageants that lead to ruthless wars of extermina- meant? Nothing. Absolutely nothing except that it’s one tion—the theodicy question really has no meaning. human possibility. But people can’t face that. It goes against However, if one believes in a dignified and loving supreme our egotism to accept that something so terrible can mean being—whether original sin is part of the equation or not— nothing except what we already know—that human beings the theodicy problem never really goes away. In the twen- are capable of anything, good and bad.” ty-first century, as ghastly news events demonstrate each day, The Charleston episode has often been analyzed in terms monotheistic believers will go to as great lengths to justify the of a specific tradition of forgiveness within the black church ways of God to man as they did in biblical times. in the United States, and that tradition was indeed one way One of the most anguishing recent examples unfolded in which an oppressed people asserted their humanity—a after the shooting by a white supremacist of nine African humanity superior to that of their white oppressors. But the Americans attending a Bible study class in the historic “Mother notion that God permits evil in order to draw good out of Emanuel” African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, what cannot be understood from a mortal perspective is as South Carolina. At the arraignment of the shooter, Dylann old as institutional Christianity, and Augustine was the first to Roof, relatives of the slain victims expressed their forgive- elaborate on this doctrine in detail. In his view, Satan was an ness—in the most devout Christian terms—for the hate-filled instrument of both punishment for man’s sins and (inadver- young man. tently) of conversion to the true path of God. This argument was used repeatedly in the Middle Ages to explain why God allowed evil witches to flourish instead of striking them down before they had the chance to work their black magic on crops as well as human lives. Indeed, those who converted to what was seen “. . . If God knows all, sees all, and controls all, as a “false” faith were often accused of witchcraft themselves. our petty efforts to make things turn out some As it happens, the insoluble theodicy problem other way mean nothing in a cosmic sense.” has been responsible for the most persistent here- sies in Christian history, ranging from Manicheism— which divides the vile body from the purer spirit—to lesser-known (today) Pelagianism. Pelagius (c. 354–420 CE), who had the temer- ity to reject the emerging doctrine of original sin, was a monk from Brittania and a contemporary of The forgiveness was then transformed—by the media, Augustine. We know little about him before he turned up politicians, and a public desperately in search of evidence in Rome around 400, but when he looked into the heart of that good can come out of evil—into a narrative that placed the empire and the aspiring heart of the church, his reaction the murders within a consoling Higher Plan. Without those seems to have resembled that of Jimmy Stewart’s character expressions of forgiveness, and the imputation to them in the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Here were men of a larger Christian purpose, it is unlikely that the South claiming to be the direct successors of the apostles while Carolina legislature would have acted swiftly to remove the living sumptuously and co-opting imperial officials (and, in Confederate flag from a place of honor outside the state cap- many instances, being co-opted by them) for financial and itol building. God must have his reasons, and in this case the political gains that had little to do with faith and goodness. reason was apparently instigation of the political will to strip Pelagius believed in his brand of Christianity as devoutly as public buildings (if not all T-shirts) of a symbol that stood for Augustine believed in his, but the former did not believe that slavery and treason. God’s grace or withholding of grace determined the actions One way to mute the theodicy problem is for a society to of men. congratulate itself on getting rid of a piece of racist iconogra- In Pelagian philosophy, Adam’s fall is not the cause of phy. Would this good have emerged from evil had the victims man’s sinfulness and each human being is solely responsible been shot in a black-owned bar instead of a black church, or if for his virtues and vices. Nor is death the penalty for origi- their relatives had said, “You deserve everything you get from nal sin, as Augustinian Christian theology maintains. Adam the courts” instead of “God forgives you and I forgive you”? was nothing more or less than a man, and he would have

16 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org ATHEODICY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF GOD

died whether he sank his teeth into the fruit of the tree of evil. Dostoevsky, in his famous dictum (expressed by the char- knowledge or not. Poor Pelagius! Small wonder that he was acter Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov) could not have been condemned by more church councils than any other heretic more wrong in the contention that “without God, everything of the premedieval Christian era. is permitted.” He not only reached the wrong conclusion but Pelagius elaborated on his belief that although God had raised the wrong question. The pertinent moral question— endowed humans with the intelligence and understanding the heart of the theodicy issue—is why a world with God is to choose between good and evil, he wants our choices to be filled with the impermissible, the unbearable, the painful fate the product of our own reason rather than fear of his pun- accorded so many human beings. ishments—“volutarium, non coactum.” God wants the fulfill- When the man I loved was “dying from the top”—a phrase ment of his plans to come from our own willing collaboration, used in the eighteenth century to describe what is now not the divine will. God wants a lot: in Pelagian philosophy, he known as Alzheimer’s disease—more than one person asked wants to have it both ways. how I could bear the experience in the absence of religious It is obvious that Pelagius was no more successful than Augustine and his orthodox contemporaries in his effort to reconcile free will with divine power. What separates him from the rest is a much higher opinion of human capacities; the balance in Pelagian thought is tilted in favor of human reason rather than divine intervention through grace. A man or “. . . If one believes in a dignified and loving supreme woman might seek divine grace but cannot rely on it being—whether original sin is part of the equation or to ensure a sound moral life. not—the theodicy problem never really goes away.” There is another element distinguishing Pelagius from the orthodox fathers of the church: a sense of humor. Regarding original sin, he remarked that “there are enough things for which we are morally accountable, without blaming us for the things for which we are not.”* Of course, the question of what, exactly, humans are faith. I cannot imagine how I could have witnessed the dete- responsible for followed us into the age of Enlightenment rioration of a brilliant mind if I did believe in a deity who reason and the age of science. While theodicy poses no prob- might have prevented that form of torture but chose to with- lem for atheists who believe in a secular form of free will, hold mercy. Such a god would be a fiend. The highest imagin- it could be more of an issue—in theory, at least—for those able blessing for an atheist is the freedom to deal with suffer- captivated by neuroscientific research based on the hypoth- ing and evil without the burden of making excuses for a esis that free will, if it exists at all, is much more limited than divine monster. vainglorious humans like to imagine. I say “in theory” because This essay is adapted from Susan Jacoby’s forthcoming book, I do not believe that science will ever succeed in “proving” Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion (Pantheon). that there is no such thing as free will; the field, in the sense that the term is used in physics, is simply too large to prove an overarching negative. Genetic and environmental constraints on what sentient humans perceive as free will can never obviate our perceived Susan Jacoby is the author of numerous books, including The Great and real need to keep dark impulses from overwhelming the Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought (2013), the New better angels of our nature. Even though atheists have no York Times best-seller The Age of American Unreason (2008), and theodicy problem, we are left with a moral duty and a moral Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, named a notable book challenge that never go away—the imperative to do right of 2004 by the Washington Post and the New York Times. She has also when we are strongly tempted to do wrong. been a contributor to a wide variety of national publications, including “I had to do what I did” is accepted as a valid defense in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the American Prospect, a courtroom only when a jury concludes that the defendant Mother Jones, the Nation, Glamour, and the AARP Bulletin and AARP was indeed insane, in the sense of lacking the physiological Magazine. She is currently a panelist for On Faith, a Washington Post- and psychological capacity to distinguish between good and Newsweek blog on religion. She is an honorary board member of CFI.

*In John Ferguson, Pelagius: A Historical and Theological Study (Cambridge, England: W. Heffer & Sons, 1956).

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 17 Evil God and Mirror Theodicies Stephen Law

he problem of evil is perhaps the best-known objec- Then consider animal suffering. Awhile ago, I watched tion to standard monotheism, which is to say belief in a wildlife documentary about Komodo dragons poisoning, TGod defined as omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient tracking for a week or so, and then—finally, when their victim (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (all-good). In fact there became too weak to defend itself—disemboweling a water are two problems of evil, the logical and the evidential. Here buffalo and eating it alive. The cameraman said this had been I focus on the evidential problem, which is often presented his first-ever wildlife assignment, and it would probably also as follows: be his last, because he couldn’t cope with the depth of suffering he had been forced to witness. That was just one poor If gratuitous evil exists, then God does not exist. creature. Each day, millions of animals are similarly forced to Gratuitous evil exists. tear each other limb from limb to survive. And this has been Therefore, God does not exist. going on for hundreds of millions of years. This is, in many “Evil,” in this context, comes in two varieties: ways, a beautiful world. But it’s also a staggeringly cruel and horrific world for many of its inhabitants. 1. Moral evils, such as the morally bad things we do as Unspeakable horror on an almost unimaginably vast scale free moral agents (we start wars, murder, steal, and the like), is built into the very fabric of the world we find ourselves and forced to inhabit. Surely as we look back across the eons, 2. Natural evils, such as natural diseases and disasters that we witness suffering of such depth and on such a vast scale cause great suffering. that it becomes highly implausible that there’s a good, God- So-called “gratuitous” evils are evils for which there exists justifying reason, not just for some of it but for every last no God-justifying reason. Perhaps God has good reason to ounce of it. And if there is any gratuitous evil at all, then there allow some evils into his creation if that is the price that must is no God. be paid for greater goods (there are examples below). But How might theists respond to this argument? The problem surely God, as defined above, won’t allow pointless, gratu can be sidestepped by simply dropping any one of the three itous evils—evils he lacks a good reason to allow. So it appears omni-attributes. Suggest, for example, that God is omnipotent the first premise of our argument is true: If gratuitous evils and omniscient but not omnibenevolent. He knows about the exist, then God does not exist. suffering and has the ability to prevent it, but, being less than Is the second premise true? Surely it is. Consider human entirely good, chooses not to. However, for most religious suffering. Take, for example, the appalling psychological suf- monotheists, these moves are unavailable. Most religious fering a parent must go through who has to watch, helpless, monotheists are fully committed to the “three-Os God.” as his or her child dies slowly of starvation or an agonizing disease. The consensus among population experts is that, Theodicies over the sweep of human prehistory—around two hundred How else might theists respond to the argument? One strat- thousand years—the parents of each generation have had to egy is to construct theodicies, or explanations for the evils we watch, on average, between a third and a half of their under- observe. Here are some examples: five children die, usually from disease. It’s only very recently Simple free-will theodicy. God desires that we do good that we have managed to bring childhood mortality rates of our own free will. He could have made us puppet beings down. The appalling suffering of these preceding generations that always did the right thing, but puppet beings aren’t of children and parents was not something they brought on responsible for their actions and so deserve neither praise nor themselves. blame. To allow moral goodness—good done by free agents

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of their own volition—God had to cut our strings and set us problem of evil, do at least collectively begin to bring it down free. Given that freedom, some then choose to do evil. That to size. We can, say some theists, begin to see that it’s not so is the price God unavoidably pays for the very great good of very unreasonable to believe in God, notwithstanding all this allowing moral goodness to enter his creation. horrific suffering. Simple character-building theodicy. Those who have suf- Many theists would add that we should acknowledge that fered sometimes say they don’t regret their suffering. We can even if we can’t explain all that suffering, it does not follow— learn valuable lessons as a result of having been through, say, and it is not reasonable for us to conclude—that there is no a difficult illness. The pain and suffering of others also gives us explanation. Why suppose that there are gratuitous evils? opportunities—for example, to help others and act in morally Because we cannot think of a God-justifying reason for them? virtuous ways. Much pain and suffering can be explained in But if there are God-justifying reasons for those evils, those terms of the opportunities they offer to grow and develop reasons could easily lie beyond our ken—beyond our limited morally and spiritually. No pain, no gain. human comprehension. So we’re not justified in concluding Simple laws-of-nature theodicy. The laws of nature that that there are any gratuitous evils. This is the response of the govern our universe bring various goods. Perhaps the most so-called “skeptical theist”: the theist who is skeptical about obvious good is this: in order for us to be able to interact our ability to know God-justifying reasons. Skeptical theism effectively with each other as free moral agents, we need is currently one of the leading philosophical responses to the to know that we live in a stable, regular universe. Suppose I problem of evil. see that you are cold and hungry. Here is an opportunity for Do these and other theodicies, perhaps in combination me to help you. I might light a fire to warm you and cook with skeptical theism, deal successfully with the evidential you some food, for example. But I can do this only if I know problem of evil? I don’t believe so. To see why, consider a that a spark produces a flame, that a flame produces heat, different god hypothesis. that the heat will warm you and cook the food, and so on. Without knowledge of such regularities, we can’t properly interact with each other as free moral agents. So God creates such regularities to allow for these and other goods. However, these same laws of nature also “So it appears the first premise of our argument is true: result in tectonic plate movements that in turn cause If gratuitous evils exist, then God does not exist.” earthquakes and tsunamis that cause great suffering. That suffering is the unavoidable price God pays for such greater goods. The three theodicies outlined above are for illustra- tive purposes only. There are many more. Each theodicy considered in isolation has its limitations. For example, while The Evil God Hypothesis the free-will theodicy might explain some human suffering— Suppose that there is indeed a single omnipotent and omni- that caused by our free human actions—it hardly explains scient deity, only this being is not omnibenevolent but omn- the hundreds of millions of years of animal suffering before imalevolent. His cruelty is beyond our comprehension. His we arrived on the scene. Nor does it explain two hundred malice knows no bounds. Who believes in a god like that? thousand years of parents and children suffering as a result Almost no one, of course. But why not? of causes beyond their control. There’s a similar problem with After all, notice that many of the most popular arguments the character-building theodicy. Perhaps some suffering is for the existence of God provide no clue as to his moral char- necessary to build our characters. But why hundreds of mil- acter. Teleological or design arguments, for example, typically lions of years of animal suffering? Was God trying to build the conclude only that there is some intelligence behind the uni- character of the dinosaurs with the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass verse. Such arguments, as they stand, supply no more support extinction event? And how plausible is it that the distribution for a good god than they do for an evil god. The same is true of human suffering is there to improve our characters? Slowly of many cosmological arguments (arguments for a first cause killing children on an industrial scale doesn’t very obviously or prime mover, etc., based on the thought that the universe improve either their characters or the characters of their requires some cause or explanation). parents. Indeed, many of us bow out of this life not with our So why not believe in an evil god? There is an obvious characters improved by our suffering but in utter despair, argument available, of course: the evidential problem of psychologically and physically crippled by the torments that good. have been inflicted on us. Still, it might be suggested that these and other theod- If gratuitous good exist, evil god does not exist. icies, even if they don’t individually deal with the evidential Gratuitous good exists.

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 19 Therefore, evil god does not exist. evils requiring the “first order” good of some people having great stuff. Why would an evil god give us delicious ice cream? Yes, the universe contains much evil. But it also contains Ice cream has to be tasty to tempt us to eat it and make our- a great deal of good, arguably far too much good to allow selves fat, miserable, and guilt-wracked for succumbing. We anyone reasonably to believe this world is the creation of such can begin to see that what goods there are all exist for an evil a powerful and malevolent being. Why all the love, laughter, reason: to intensify our pain and misery. ice cream, and rainbows? Why does an evil god allow us to A laws-of-nature mirror theodicy. Without a stable, law-gov- see beauty, allow us to help people and reduce suffering, and erned universe, various important evils are unavailable to an give us children to love who love us unconditionally in return? evil god. Suppose I want to commit some horrible crime—kill Perhaps an evil god will allow some goods as the price paid for you and your family, say. That’s something an evil god will greater evils, but surely at least some of the goods we observe want to allow. But to commit such a crime, I need to know that are gratuitous in the sense that there’s no evil-god-justifying when I strike a match it will produce a flame, when I pour pet- reason for them. Surely, if the world were the creation of an evil god, it would be much more like a vast torture chamber. rol through your letterbox and throw the match it will ignite, Notice that the evidential argument from good mirrors the and that the resulting fireball will kill you and your family. evidential argument from evil. In each case, we note that the Without knowledge of such regularities, we cannot properly world just doesn’t look as we should expect if there really were interact with each other as free moral agents and thereby such an omnipotent deity responsible for it. create moral evil. So an evil god creates such regularities. However, the downside to the same laws of nature that result Mirror Theodicies in the fireball is beautiful rainbows and other goods. Beautiful Is the evidential argument from good an effective argument rainbows are the price an evil god pays for such evils. against belief in an evil god? What if, in its defense, I make the Notice that a defender in belief in an evil god, just like a following suggestion: a free-will mirror theodicy? standard theist, can also supplement his or her theodicies by Why would an evil god allow us to help each other and appealing to skeptical theism. For if reasons that would justify so reduce suffering? Surely an evil god would clamp down a good god in allowing evils are likely to be beyond our ken, on such benevolent behavior, which thwarts his evil desires? then reasons justifying an evil god in allowing goods are no Here’s an explanation. Evil god desires that we do evil of our less likely to be beyond our ken. If our inability to think of God- own free will. He could have made us puppet beings that justifying reasons for observed evils fails to justify the conclu- always did the bad thing, but puppet beings are not respon- sion there are no such reasons, then our inability to think of sible for their actions and so deserve neither praise nor blame evil-God-justifying reasons for observed goods similarly fails to for their actions. To allow moral evil—evil done by free agents justify the conclusion that there are no such evil reasons. of their own volition—evil god had to cut our strings and set us It appears that these various defenses of belief in an evil free. Given that freedom, some of us choose to do good. That god are about as effective as the standard theistic defenses of is the price paid by evil God for the very great evil of allowing belief in a good god. moral evil to enter his creation. Conclusions Clearly, the above free-will theodicy mirrors the standard free-will theodicy that I outlined earlier. And in fact very many So why is belief in a good god very significantly more rea- theodicies (if not all) can be similarly mirrored. Two more sonable than belief in an evil god? Theists invariably do think examples follow. belief in a good god, if not “proved,” is at least by no means A character-destroying mirror theodicy. Why does an evil unreasonable. Yet they consider the evil god hypothesis god allow love, ice cream, rainbows, and healthy, wealthy, absurd, which it surely is. How do they account for this differ- happy folk? Again, explanations are available. Consider the ence in reasonableness? suffering of parents who had had to watch around a third of After all, these two god hypotheses appear to receive their children under five die for the last two hundred thousand roughly similar support from the standard teleological and years. If these parents did not love their children, they would cosmological arguments, at least considered in isolation. Both not suffer nearly so much. Love is a necessary precondition hypotheses face an evidential problem (in the form of good or of some of the most appalling forms of suffering. An evil evil) but then in each case a response is available in the form god will also allow some goods—rainbows, for example—as of theodicies and appeals to skeptical theism. a contrast to make the dreariness and ugliness of the rest of Yet, surely, the evil god hypothesis is absurd. Surely, we can his creation all the more obvious. He will no doubt give a few reasonably rule out an evil god on the basis of observation, people wonderful things—great wealth and privilege, for notwithstanding the various ingenious mirror theodicies we example—in order to make the rest of us feel resentful and have now cooked up, plus skeptical theism. So why is the good- jealous. Resentment and jealousy are so-called “second order” god hypothesis significantly less absurd? I don’t believe there is

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a satisfactory answer to this question. What we haven’t done, as yet, is explain precisely what is True, answers have been offered. Some theists insist there wrong with the theodicies, mirror-theodicies and also with are cogent arguments for a good god not mirrored by argu- skeptical theism, as responses to the problems of evil and ments for an evil god. There are moral arguments specifically good. Explaining that requires more space than is available for a good god, for example. However, even many theists find here. But I’ll finish with this suggestion: the strategy of con- these arguments unpersuasive. structing theodicies/mirror theodicies to explain away the Or perhaps the theist will insist that religious miracles, observed good/evil suffers the same fundamental defect as religious experiences, and Scripture support belief in a good the strategy of young-Earth creationists who, in response to god, there being no comparable evidence for an evil god. But powerful evidence that Earth is much older than six thousand there are numerous religions, and each has its own stock of years, proceed to cook up endless convoluted explanations (in miracles, religious experiences, and scriptures. These religions terms of the biblical flood and so forth) to explain that evidence away. When we are presented with powerful evidence contradict each other, having received incompatible mes- against what we believe, it is always possible to cook up such sages and directives from their respective god(s). This is a rec- explanations. That doesn’t mean it’s not good evidence. ipe for endless strife and conflict. Now isn’t revealing himself in such dangerously misleading ways just the sort of recipe an evil god would follow? Surely a good god would avoid gen- Stephen Law is a senior lecturer at Heythrop College, University of erating such confusion and hostility! So perhaps miracles and London. He edits the philosophical journal Think and has published the like are, on closer examination, better evidence for an evil academic papers and popular introductory books on philosophy, includ- god than a good god. ing three for children. He is the secretary of the Counil for Secular We might not know why the universe exists. But surely Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism. we can still reasonably rule out the suggestion that it is the creation of either of these two gods.

Evil Gods and Evil Men: Some Limits in the Debate David Koepsell

first became interested in the problem of evil (POE) after well as those who use the POE to argue for the nonexistence the death of my good friend and mentor Peter Hare. I was of gods, all beg the question about the nature of evil itself, I asked to write a chapter for an issue of the Transactions which underlies and supplies the weak foundation for either of the Charles Peirce Society (with which Hare had long side. If one wishes to use the POE to disprove the existence of been associated) about Hare’s work on POE, which was well some god, one must accept certain assumptions that should known and influential. I’ve expounded on Hare and his col- concern a nonbeliever—not only claims about the existence laborators’ (mostly Edward Madden’s) detailed taxonomy of gods and their natures but also moral claims about the and discussion of various theodicies and defenses in that existence of good and evil. In order to debate the POE and its article, so I will here venture off into my own new territory, impact on the question of the existence of gods, we must beg sparked in part by a bit of their discussion and insights. more questions than we ought to be comfortable begging. The POE is of course an analytical/logical problem. It can- Madden and Hare point to the departure I’ll take in this not be resolved by any empirical means, and it is trapped in a discussion when concluding their discussion of various “eva- sense by the leading nature of the terms involved. The term sions” of the problem by their contemporaries Barth and evil is loaded and provides me with a puzzle and an appreci- Tillich. According to Protestant theologian Karl Barth and ation for the arguments on both sides. Proponents of various similar to the arguments of his contemporary Paul Tillich, nat- theodicies and defenses that attempt to solve the problem, as ural evil is a “nothingness” that results whenever God creates

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 21 something, and the nothingness continues to try to encroach North Whitehead was a collaborator with Bertrand Russell on creation. Hare and Madden argue well that this redefini- and a philosopher whose modern “process” metaphysics tion is really just an evasion. They conclude their discussion opposed the “substance” metaphysics of Aristotle and oth- of evasion with a hypothetical “problem of good,” wherein ers. I’ll describe the impact on theology shortly.) a mystical experience occurs to someone in which the all-evil 4. If we must debate from the POE, the only conclusion we nature of the true god is revealed. And so, with an all-power- can reach is what I call the “Lovecraft Theodicy.” ful, all-evil god, we are forced to wonder about the existence of good in the world. They demonstrate that the problem What Is Evil? of evil and the problem of good are isomorphic, meaning All of the contributors to the debate noted above, and oth- that they can be reversed and are logically equivalent to one ers yet unmentioned, must assume for the purposes of the another. This leads to two important conclusions. debate some definition of what amounts to “evil.” In most cases, some version of “suffering without reason or justice” 1. Evaders cannot fully evade the problem, since they would is assumed to be evil. Harder to define is the “good,” which fail under the problem-of-good hypothetical. They should makes for a problem when flipping the debate as Hare, allow others to do unto them as they would do unto others. Madden, and Law do, into the “problem of good.” There are 2. Because of the isomorphism of the problems of good and two perspectives I am wont to adopt that cause me to doubt evil, the theist must choose and cannot avoid the conse- the usefulness of these terms and, thus, the foundations quences by so choosing. for both the POE and the problem of good (POG). One is a Stephen Law, in his excellent article “The Evil-god naturalistic stance, in which all there is is nature, and ques- Challenge,” notes that Madden and Hare first raise the basis tions about social objects such as “the good” or “evil” must for his own contribution through the discussion we have just somehow be accommodated into a naturalistic worldview. considered, in which the tables are turned by supposing that, The other is an existentialist stance, in which all there is is “existence,” and existence precedes essence, such that when we claim there is some moral essence to something we experience, we necessarily project our own biases and assump- “If one wishes to use the POE to disprove the existence of tions, wrapped in the context of some social, cultural, or historical milieu. some god, one must accept certain assumptions that The social categories of evil and good are should concern a nonbeliever. . . .” necessarily fluid, and history demonstrates that over time and from culture to culture they change. Admittedly, there are some very compelling examples to which most ascribe, given an evil god, the problem of evil becomes the problem and we generally agree when we wish to of good, as the problem is isomorphic. Law points out some point to something “evil.” There are outliers, of course, to asymmetries and argues for them while concluding along each of these agreements, with no perfect overlap for any the way that his own arguments provide a more “nuanced population about the objective nature of any instance of evil. and tougher” challenge to theism than previous attempts via This is either a problem with the judging of subjects or one of the “problem of good.” Law’s analysis is excellent and thor- the categories themselves. I remain skeptical about the objec- ough and probably the best to appear in the literature since tive nature of evil and good, and one can make arguments for Madden’s and Hare’s. It will serve as a resource in the debate even the most stark and apparently clear examples simply by for decades. What I wish to argue is from an entirely different choosing a different ethical theory as the basis for judgment, perspective and to contribute by throwing a monkey wrench as indeed philosophers often do. I am trying very hard to be a moral realist, but the lack of good evidence that would com- of sorts into the entire analytic problem itself by supposing a pel me to be so makes it very difficult. Unfortunately, both number of things. the POE and the POG depend upon moral realism. Without 1. The terms involved and their associated concepts are insuf- an objective good or evil, the use of either the POE or POG to ficiently clear to allow for conclusions on either side of the either prove or disprove theism becomes pointless. debate. There could indeed be some objective good or evil, or 2. The POE cannot logically lead to dismissing theism. we could decide to accept, as seems more likely, that these 3. At best we end up with a sort of Whitehead-ian pro- categories are useful and real social objects created by some cess theology by engaging in the debate at all. (Alfred collective intentionality. In either case, there are limits to

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the manners in which the objects themselves exist, and they which is contrary to his will, he participates in it and suffers appear to be in both cases tied to human existence rather from it and is, as Whitehead calls it, “a fellow sufferer who than to either that of gods or other creatures. Holding non- understands” rather than a coercer, punisher, or judge. humans to account for actions or intentions we call either The power of a process-theology god is relational rather “good” or “evil” is not warranted by observation, even than dictatorial. For process theologians, the capacity to per- from a theistic perspective. This is in fact one of the dodges suade us through our knowledge of the god rather than to employed by defenders of the POE (and by logical extension, intervene directly and force us to do or not do things (includ- the POG). Categorizing the acts of nonhumans according to ing evil and good) is much more powerful and godlike than human categories is simply inappropriate. the actions of a puppet-master–type god. Great evils will and do occur because of our human failures to participate properly The Logical Problem in god, rather than through some failing of a god who in fact A significant limitation for the POE depends upon the lacks the power to alter nature or violate our volition on a self-sealing nature of the definitions involved in the analytic mechanical scale. argument. Related to the problem of terminology and no Whether one believes, as many critics do, that the process objective categories is the issue involved in the logic of the god is somehow reduced from the traditional notion of a move from the existence of evil to the impossibility of a god. dictator/puppet-master god or not (as process theologians In fact, one can easily still accept the existence of evil gods, argue), this is a sort of god one could still accept in light of the or at least gods who are perfectly willing to tolerate evil and existence of evil, which becomes in process theology no prob- perhaps even sometimes cause it. I believe that Law´s treatment of the evil-god challenge is thorough and convincing, but it does not entail in the end a challenge to all possible forms of theism. Rather it challenges only to the sort of theism generally accepted by the Judeo-Christian tradition: that is, asserting a “. . . I wish to . . . contribute by throwing a monkey benevolent (etc., etc.) type of god. wrench of sorts into the entire analytic problem itself. . . .” Even assuming the existence of some objective evil, this merely implies the nonexistence of benev olent gods, absent the theodicies and defenses. Yet the notion of benevolent gods is not universal, and it is not necessary for the existence of a religion. As Hare, lem at all. Accepting a process god, or any other type of god Madden, Law, and others note, the reverse problem, the who allows evil without contradiction, is not an evasion of the POG, is isomorphic to the POE, and working through its impli- POE (or POG). Instead, it is a natural conclusion to recognizing cations leads us eventually to doubt not the existence of all that evil exists if one somehow believes in the existence of gods but only benevolent ones. Once we alter the premises of some “higher power.” While nothing necessitates that belief the POE to match our experience—that there is evil or things in the first place, arguing from the POE does not lead logically we call “evil” and that these are perfectly acceptable to the or materially to the necessity of denying theism entirely; it omniscient and all powerful Zeus or whomever—then the merely requires reassessing one’s notion of divinity. POE no longer becomes an argument against theism. It is not Process theology is still quite influential, particularly with even a very convincing argument against Old Testament–style Jewish theologians as well as among the “New Thought” theism, given Jehovah’s propensity to tolerate or commit evil Christian theologians, who appear in many respects to be against any but his chosen people. pantheists in a similar sense to Baruch Spinoza. Tillich himself has been described as a process theologian, as he argues a The Fellow-Sufferer Exception variant of process metaphysics in which God is the ground of Both the POE and POG might well convince someone to existence rather than a separate, causal force. adopt the perspective of process theology, in which the Despite its attractiveness to both theologians and scholars notion of a god is altered from some all-powerful coercer to interested in refining arguments against theism, the POE an immanent persuader. For Whitehead and other process must be admitted to be a sort of shell game, a logic puzzle theologians, the notion of a god is not undermined by the that falls apart upon inspection and upon the realization POE at all. Rather, God—who is all-present and all-knowing— that the premises are so tenuous, so delicate, that altering is a growing, changing entity immanent in all of creation, them in any way renders the arguments on either side moot. participating in its evolution and nudging us through our This is why I took Law’s arguments and ran with them when knowledge of his presence to do good. Even when we do evil, I applied the evil-god challenge to one of my favorite gods,

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 23 only partly tongue-in-cheek because it really is rather illus- natural, unimaginably enormous universe of an age we can trative. Perhaps you’ve heard of Cthulhu? As it turns out, scarcely fathom, then the monsters that can be thought to Cthulhu provides us with an example of how neither the POE inhabit it become nearly infinite. Lovecraft’s monsters are nor the POG provide sufficient reason to reject his existence gods. The “great old ones” or “elders” that comprise his and indeed offers a more fitting framework for understand- pantheon are physical creatures, very ancient, lost evolu- ing the existence of suffering without warrant, especially tionary dead-ends, and extinct races and creatures that may from a naturalist standpoint. or may not have come from other planets but that humans worshipped as gods. The most well known of this mythos The Lovecraft Theodicy is Cthulhu, who is imagined as an enormous (hundreds of Dystheism, in which a malevolent god actively tortures humanity, meters tall) creature with tentacles where a mouth should be abounds in literary works exploring the mystery and inevitability and wings, flippers, claws, and the like. He sleeps now under of unjust suffering. Perhaps no better, more brooding, and well the ocean awaiting his chance to return to the surface of fleshed-out modern dystheistic mythos is the Cthulhu mythos the earth. The modern sci-fi equivalent might be something like the kaiju mythos underlying the Godzilla movies. Infrequent in Lovecraft is some reference to modern Christianity. Unlike the standard “. . . The problem of evil must be admitted to be a sort horror fare in which proper attention to of shell game, a logic puzzle that falls apart upon inspection Christian faith can protect us from devils, the Lovecraftian gods are utterly indifferent to and upon the realization that the premises are so tenuous, humanity, except maybe when it serves as an so delicate, that altering them in any way renders often-accidental food source. While humans the arguments on either side moot.” worship the great old ones, it isn’t clear that the Lovecraftian gods care whether they are worshipped or not, only that they are fed. In some way, the Lovecraft oeuvre is existential. The universe is too big, too impersonal, and of H. P. Lovecraft. Instead of being taken as a literal mythos, utterly indifferent to our puny, human existences. Cthulhu Lovecraft’s own philosophy has been described as “cosmic and the old ones, the elders, and all the monsters of the uni- indifferentism,” which followed from his mechanistic materialist verse are evil only by our interpretation, just as ants (if they metaphysics. I believe it is more or less existentialism, and so I could) might consider us evil in our daily genocides of their used the Lovecraft theodicy that I wrote about in my online blog kind as we walk so carelessly down the street. at the Center for Inquiry website as an opportunity to make the existentialist case for suffering. It is neither a theodicy nor an Existence Is All We Have argument for or against theism but rather an argument from a The universe itself is a harsh place. Stars explode, asteroids roughly Lovecraftian view of the universe and the human place impact, species come and go, and its indifference is embod- in it. ied by Cthulhu, an enormous tentacled, clawed, and winged Lovecraft was an author of horror stories who never really monster who lies dormant now at the bottom of the ocean achieved great success in his lifetime, but his work has heavily but still populates our nightmares. To us, nature’s indifferent influenced modern science-fiction and horror. His writing destructiveness is horrible; it is evil. Perhaps this is just a mat- style is often turgid, his prose is repetitive (count the number ter of perspective, and we label too readily with terms delin- of times the word blasphemous appears through his work), eating values things that occur without regard for intention. and he is often sexist and racist. Regardless, he is now legend- While humans can create such perspective, and choose to ary. His influence on the culture comes, some have argued, harm or not our fellow humans (and perhaps other sentient from his standing uneasily between modernity and some- creatures), our perception of sentience itself might be limited. thing quite premodern, almost ancient. Despite his penchant Cthulhu and the other Lovecraftian gods seem at times to for horror, one could argue that there is very little “supernat- barely even perceive us, going about their “lives” with little ural” about his works. The monsters that inhabit his universe more regard for us than we have for flies or rocks. This is the are nearly all conceived of as having some natural basis. Lovecraftian theodicy. The great big horrific universe has Mostly, they are vast and ancient aliens who existed long no regard at all for us, our sentience, our pain, or our short before humanity and care not at all for our puny existence. lives. Cthulhu has absolutely no problem with evil. That’s only Once we become accustomed to the notion of an utterly something we should care about, not gods.

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The Lovecraft theodicy is existential. It recognizes, as in Madden, E. H. and P. H. Hare. 1967. “On the Difficulty of Evading the existentialism, the “priority of existence to essence,” or in Problem of Evil.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 28, no. 1 (September). other words, the lack of any meaning to existence except that Madden, E. H. and P. H. Hare. 1968. Evil and the Concept of God. which we impose. In existentialism, there is existence, and Springfield, Ill.:Charles C. Thomas. there is us. We are superimposed on existence to give it Koepsell, D. R. 2015. “The Lovecraft Theodicy: Cthulhu has No Problem meaning, which we are utterly free to do. Lovecraft recog- of Evil.” http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/the_love- craft_theodicy_cthulhu_has_no_problem_of_evil/. August 13. nizes that conceptions of divinity are matters mostly of scale, and we can see in his mythos the limits of philosophy in deal- ing with premises that are fragile and not prone to empirical verification or falsification and that are not helpful in under- David Koepsell, JD/PhD, is an author, philosopher, attorney (retired), standing suffering. It is experienced, and it is in all respects and educator whose recent research has focused on the nexus of pointless, but it is ultimately meaningless except to the extent science, technology, ethics, and public policy. He has provided com- that it casts a pall over our existence. We cannot understand mentary regarding ethics, society, religion, and technology for many it, because the universe cares not at all for us. It is up to us to media outlets, including MSNBC, Fox News Channel, the Guardian, the pave our way through our suffering, and if we choose to do it Washington Times, NPR Radio, Radio Free Europe, Air America, the with labels such as “good” and “evil” then we must face the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and the Associated Press. He has been logical consequences of doing so without expecting this to a tenured associate professor of philosophy at the Delft University of alter our suffering. Technology, Faculty of Technology, Policy, and Management in the Netherlands; visiting professor at UNAM, Instituto de Filosoficas and Further Reading the Unidad Posgrado, Mexico; and director of Research and Strategic Cobb, John B., and David Ray Griffin. 1976. Process Theology: An Initiatives at Comisión Nacional de Bioética in Mexico. He is director Introductory Exposition. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press. of Education for the Center for Inquiry Institute and a former executive Law, Stephen. 2010. “The Evil-god Challenge.” Religious Studies 46, director of the Council for Secular Humanism. no. 3: 353–73. Lowell, Mark. 2004. “Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.” The Explicator 63, no. 1: 47–50. Is It Wrong to Accept God’s Gift of Salvation? James A. Metzger

’ve recently had the privilege of revisiting an anthology remission from sin or postmortem reunion with loved ones. of autobiographical essays written by several prominent It is, then, concrete social and psychological benefits that Iconservative Christian philosophers titled Philosophers generally draw and sustain them, not the unassailable ratio- Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of 11 Leading Thinkers. I nality or persuasiveness of Christian truth-claims. Strikingly, was especially impressed this time around with the honesty no contributor says that the discipline of philosophy led him that all of its contributors exhibited. None, for instance, says or her to faith in the Christian god. Frederick Suppe even that the primary reason that he or she embraces Christianity acknowledges that philosophy had proven so “hazardous is because its truth claims are so well justified that no ratio- to faith” that he eventually decided he had no choice but nal person could possibly resist believing them. Instead, to surrender his reason and “buy the whole thing, without common motives given for maintaining religious affiliation reservation or hesitation.” include inner joy and peace, the desire to belong to a com- While impressed with their candor, I was also unsettled munity of care, a heightened sense of purpose and meaning, by the self-serving nature of their chief reasons for joining and confidence in the veridicality of religious experiences or remaining part of a faith community. For most contribu- had during one’s youth. Many also highlight consolation tors, when the gift of faith and its benefits was offered, they received from the gospel’s most important promises, such as accepted gladly and without hesitation, overjoyed that the

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 25 creator of the universe had chosen them to play for the win- nates—who, by the way, account for the overwhelming majority ning team. There is virtually no mention of all those unfortu- of our species. nate people who never were—nor ever will be—offered this same gift. One wonders: What of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, once gladly accepted the gift of salvation too. It felt good Taoists, and Wiccans who either weren’t presented with the Iknowing that I was on the winning team and that I would Christian message or have no reason to believe that it offers a be rewarded in the afterlife for doing what was asked of me. path to salvation or liberation more compelling than the one And, like so many of these authors, I also believed I had felt with which they’re already familiar? What of those raised in the joy of God’s presence while gazing at a majestic moun- agnostic or humanist households? What of people who, pertain peak or over an open prairie in full bloom, and I took haps because of chronic illness or some great personal loss, comfort in the knowledge that I had been set free from sin simply cannot believe that a benevolent deity presides over and its postmortem consequences. My religious beliefs and this world? experiences gave me a sense of peace. As a well-educated white male of privilege living in the developed world, I can’t say I really needed any of this, but it felt wonderful nonetheless. Why deny oneself this extra pleasure? Nearly a decade ago, the sudden onset of a “Strikingly, no contributor says that the discipline chronic, painful, and incurable rheumatic illness of philosophy led him or her to faith in the Christian god.” triggered an intensive reevaluation of my religious beliefs. Because things had gone reasonably well up to this point, I had never really been pressed to question the worldview I was sold. But I soon found myself standing on the outside of life looking in, where I began to see what so many others in my All contributors are (or were) professors (1) whose research position do: gratuitous suffering—suffering that serves no is highly regarded by colleagues in their respective areas of real purpose—is everywhere. Healthy people may not see expertise; (2) who have been well-compensated for reward- the pain all around them, but those who have entered what ing work; (3) who were granted extended periods of leave at Laurie Edwards calls “the kingdom of the sick” very often do. some point during their careers to travel and pursue writing The problem of suffering and evil, which has given theo- projects that brought them personal satisfaction; and (4) who logians in monotheistic traditions fits for millennia, suddenly obtained a measure of job security unavailable to most of became deeply personal and pressing. Given the overwhelm- the world’s labor force. Furthermore, they all have spent the ing magnitude and variety of gratuitous suffering worked better part of their careers in wealthy, industrialized nations, into the very fabric of God’s world—indeed, worked into a thereby benefiting from fine health care, abundant food, cruel and wasteful evolutionary process that extends back clean water, and a variety of rights and freedoms denied to hundreds of millions of years—it seemed that I would have many around the globe. no choice but to dispense either with God’s power or God’s But all that has not been enough. These authors also must goodness. Because I simply couldn’t convince myself that a savor the feeling of being “nourished and refreshed” repeat- creator has no power to alter the structure of his own world edly by a sense of God’s loving presence. They seize upon the so as to relieve at least some of our suffering, I felt I had no inner peace that comes with knowing that one day, after a life option but to surrender God’s goodness. If there is a deity at of extraordinary privilege here on Earth, things will get even all, I concluded, he can’t be the benevolent and all-powerful better as they “bask eternally in the Beatific Vision,” all the while sovereign most Christians claim to worship today. Any creator relishing the companionship of others of God’s favorites. They of this world is not worthy of our worship—of fear, awe, or have been saved, and it feels so good that they can’t imagine even pity but certainly not adoration. ever having to give up this magnificent windfall. For those who So, I joined the godforsaken of this world, partly because I haven’t been offered this precious gift, well, that’s just too bad. had no choice but also because I wanted nothing to do with a As Paul once put it, God as creator has every right to make some creator who made a world such as ours and then did nothing people exclusively for the purpose of being annihilated and oth- whatsoever to diminish gratuitous suffering. Should there be ers for eternal communion with him (Romans 9:19–24). Because a creator (I doubt there is), I decided that I would stand in this is so, the elect ought just to be grateful when the gift of faith solidarity with those he has rejected or simply ignored. I came is extended and try not to focus too much on all those unfortu- to feel that you can’t have it both ways: either you accept the

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gift of faith and its benefits or you stand with the mass of who have had the good fortune of being introduced to the humanity for whom the traditional Christian god has shown gospel and managed to accept its central tenets on faith. But no regard. I chose solidarity. this god is limited in his ability to relieve suffering and, like us, he is still maturing intellectually, emotionally, and even mor- or me, the decision remains a profoundly moral one. On ally. Furthermore, unlike the omniscient sovereign of ages Fthe one hand, like Pascal we can wager on the existence past, he hasn’t the slightest clue as to what the future holds. of a deity and his offer of eternal bliss in the absence of con- The future hinges largely upon what kinds of decisions we vincing evidence and hope for the best. Of course, if we do, and other sentient beings make in response to God’s “luring” we also ought to admit to ourselves that we have let fear and us toward aims that he believes will prove most conducive egoism get the best of us. Perhaps far worse is that we end to eudaimonia. If God’s intentions for us are to be realized, up aligning ourselves with a cosmic sociopath who habitually say progressives, they will emerge not through an exercise ignores the cries of good people in tremendous pain and of divine power or coercion but through God’s gentle per- even creates a majority of us solely for the purpose of being suasion. destroyed (Paul) or suffering eternally (the Synoptic Gospels). This is one option, but it is not a particularly honorable one. The other is to stand in solidarity with all those about whom this creator doesn’t give a damn. “They have been saved, and it feels so good that they Maybe we lose out on eternal life, but we can do so with the confidence that sympathy and solidarity are can’t imagine ever having to give up this magnificent far more noble aspirations than aiming to save one’s windfall. For those who haven’t been offered this pre- skin from hellfire and savor endless bliss, all the while cious gift, well, that’s just too bad.” aware that billions upon billions of others have been exterminated en masse or are enduring unimaginable suffering elsewhere without hope of reprieve. Applying the term wrong to a Christian’s decision to accept However, as Richard Dawkins and other outspoken athe- God’s gift of salvation admittedly may be pushing it a bit too ists have repeatedly pointed out, even though this overhaul far, partly because many adherents today truly aren’t aware of the divine character was introduced in academic circles of just what kind of mercurial and often inhumane biblical well over a half century ago, it has been adopted only by a character it is to whom Roman Catholic, Protestant, and very small minority of adherents around the world. More Eastern Orthodox communities have historically professed important, it bears little resemblance to the Bible’s protago- allegiance. To do so, then, may constitute a failure to account nist, whose unchecked power, unabashed favoritism, capri- for an adherent’s unique epistemic situation and limitations. ciousness, and cruelty seem to know no bounds. Because Nevertheless, in communities where members clearly are progressive theologians’ newly minted deity either has no aware of the unsavory features of the biblical god—especially power to alleviate suffering or has chosen not to make use of his utter indifference toward the present well-being and what little power he does have, he has virtually no chance of postmortem fate of a majority of Earth’s inhabitants—but being embraced by Christian communities on a broad scale. gladly accept this gift anyway, I think it’s fair to say that such For most people, a god without power—or, alternatively, a a decision likely indicates a lack of sympathy for all those for god without the will to use it—is no god at all. whom salvation necessarily remains out of reach, as well as an excessive preoccupation with securing a future of personal y hope is that more and more will surrender their alle- gratification and ease. Needless to say, neither character trait Mgiance to the impulsive, egomaniacal, vengeful, sexist, is particularly admirable. ableist, hyper-punitive deity of traditional Christianity, whose Although probably evident to many readers by now, the arrested moral development should automatically disqualify following point ought to be made explicit: when referring him as an object of worship in the modern era, and take their to God, I am referring to the deity in whom Christians tradi place alongside the vast majority of our species for whom he tionally have professed faith, not the god of all-inclusive love seems to show little or no interest. If someone who disaffili- introduced by progressive theologians during the latter half ates from Christianity’s traditional god should subsequently of the twentieth century to accommodate our more refined choose to affiliate with the far more humane deity introduced moral sensibilities. This deity, say progressive theologians, by late–twentieth-century theologians, I happen to think that cares deeply for all he has made, and he desires to redeem all that’s perfectly acceptable. To be sure, the likelihood of such living organisms rather than a mere handful of Homo sapiens a being actually existing would seem rather low. But atheists,

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 27 agnostics, and members of other religious communities are tainment you could ever want simply not cut it? Must you also not the only ones to underscore this point. In fact, I am not lay claim to the inner joy and peace that the sensus divinitatus aware of any reputable progressive theologian who would occasionally bestows on you as you climb majestic mountain deny that the following claim bears a low degree of proba- peaks? Must you also draw daily consolation from the prom- bility: “A creator exists, and this creator happens to possess ise of eternal bliss? And, do the rest of us really not matter to exactly those qualities that progressive Christians ascribe you? Solidarity or salvation—I am not convinced you can have to him.” This is precisely why faith—believing beyond or, in both. I wish you would stand with us. Kierkegaard’s case, even against the evidence—must play an Further Reading essential role in any adherent’s life. Any ethically responsible Clark, Kelly James, editor. 1993. Philosophers Who Believe: The religious praxis today, then, will not only require severing Spiritual Journeys of 11 Leading Thinkers. Downers Grove, Ill.: ties with Christianity’s traditional god but will also involve Intervarsity Press. conceding that one must venture an epistemic leap that far Edwards, Laurie. 2014. In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America. New York: Bloomsbury USA. surpasses what the currently available evidence would seem to support. But to all those conservative professors of privilege who contributed to Philosophers Who Believe and who have main- James A. Metzger received his PhD in Religious Studies from Vanderbilt tained allegiance to some form of Christianity’s traditional University and has taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School, Luther College, deity, I would say: Have you not enough as it is? Will financial East Carolina University, and Pitt Community College. He is the author stability, superb medical care, a rewarding vocation, freedom of three books and numerous academic articles. to speak your mind, and access to the all the food and enter-

Auschwitz and Evil: My Experience Growing Up as the Son of a Survivor Edward Tabash

he lifelong trauma my mother suffered from her hen I was four, my mother brought me into the kitchen Auschwitz experiences began to impact me at an early Wand said in a matter-of-fact way, “Do you see the oven Tage. It was the initial impetus for my questioning the where I bake things? My daddy and brother, who were your existence of an all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing god. grandfather and uncle, were burned in an oven by the Nazis, My father, an Orthodox rabbi from a major prewar seminary just a few years ago.” That same year, she came into my room in Lithuania, met my mother in Los Angeles after the war. one day, shouting in her native Hungarian, which I couldn’t He gave up his pulpit to open a carpet store in 1950, when understand. She hid me under my bed, telling me in English I was born. He remained active in Orthodox circles but later that German soldiers were coming and that she didn’t want them to find me. Later, when my father came home, he asked developed serious doubts about all religious claims. me what I did during the day. I told him that we had played I will describe some of my experiences growing up as the a game about German soldiers and described what had hap- son of a deeply troubled Holocaust survivor before I begin pened. He turned pale and said “Son, that wasn’t a game.” I any philosophical discussion. These events are wrenching remember telling him that it was a game because there were enough to do much of the heavy lifting in making the argu- no real soldiers. He then gave me a perfect answer for a four- ment that suffering such as that endured by my mother—and, year-old. He said, “When we sleep, we have dreams. Some- of course, countless other people since the dawn of human- times Mommy has dreams when she is awake.” ity—is inconsistent with what we can justifiably expect from The next incident occurred on Halloween when I was six. an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent deity. I didn’t go trick-or-treating. Instead, my mother dressed me

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up in a costume to greet the kids who came to our door. And the funeral arrangements because she figured that she and what a costume it was! To this day, I still don’t know where my father would be too grief-stricken to do so if they survived she got the outfit. She refused to ever tell me. Somehow she the explosion and I didn’t. was able to obtain or cobble together a Gestapo costume The proprietor knew my father and called him to pick us replete with a toy German Luger, boots, and a swastika arm- up. My father burst into the mortuary and began screaming band. I didn’t understand the full significance of what I was at my mother. She gave him a very cold, steely look and told wearing. However, I was amused by the shocked reception I him that she was being the rational one. She said that they received from the kids and particularly their parents when I would both be so devastated if I got blown up during my bar opened the door. mitzvah that neither of them would be able to function suffi- My mother was suffering from what was later called the ciently to arrange my funeral. So, she was exercising foresight “Stockholm syndrome,” in which captives begin to identify by making those arrangements now, in advance of that soon- with their captors. When my father came home and saw me to-be fateful day. I remember being quite bemused. I later in this outfit, he screamed at her. She calmly responded that asked her why, if she had been so convinced that the caller she was just planning for the future. She said that when the would bomb the synagogue, we didn’t just hold the event Nazis take over here in America, I will be able to pass for one somewhere else. She never answered me. of them and not be killed, unlike the fate that would befall both of them. My father whisked me into another room and tearfully apologized for leaving me in the care of such a “crazy mother.” “. . . Suffering such as that endured by my In the late fifties, Mickey Cohen was more or less the generally accepted organized crime kingpin in Los mother—and, of course, countless other people Angeles. An associate of Cohen’s had been released from since the dawn of humanity—is inconsistent with what prison. My father tried to help him start a small business. we can justifiably expect from an omnipotent, In 1959, when I was eight, my mother began insisting that we invite Cohen over for dinner, since we now had a omniscient, and omnibenevolent deity.” chance to actually meet him. My friends thought this was really cool. I had to play the role of mature little old man. I said that organized crime figures may be fascinating on She did display self-control and marvelous humor in one television and in movies but are deadly in real life. I was afraid incident. In 1961, when I was ten, the mother of one of my Cohen might make a move on the family business. friends came over to talk to my mother and me. She told my Acting more like my mother’s father than her son, I insisted that we avoid meeting him. My father agreed. She began mother that she was sorry about her Auschwitz experiences. to cry hysterically and scream, like a petulant child, that she She then said that she had decided that my mother was just had to meet Mickey Cohen. She finally explained, through too emotionally unstable and that she didn’t want her son her tears, that after Auschwitz, she wanted to finally meet “a fellow Jew who, for a change, holds the gun.” My father and I made sure that we never met him. My bar mitzvah was set for Saturday, December 28, 1963. On November 22, President John F. Kennedy was assassi- nated. Two days later, a Jewish nightclub owner killed the accused assassin on nationwide television. The day after that, someone called the synagogue where my bar mitzvah was scheduled and angrily said something about Jews always having to get mixed up in everything. This got back to my mother. A few weeks later, when I came home from school, she greeted me with a dazed look on her face. She told me not to say a word and to just accompany her. We got into a taxi and went to a local Jewish mortuary. She told the proprietor that she expected the synagogue to be blown up by this anonymous caller on the day of my bar mitzvah, since The author visiting Auschwitz in 2005, commemorating the sixtieth there would be many people there. She calmly said that she anniversary of his mother’s liberation. wanted to immediately purchase a coffin for me and make

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 29 around her. So, she was no longer going to allow him to see other young Hungarian women, as a translator, because of me. I was afraid that my mother would become enraged and her German language skills. Every morning, she was to give hysterical. To my great relief, she winked at me, leaned over, a count of the number of these women to the guards. One and whispered, “Watch this. I am having a particularly good morning she gave an inaccurate count. One of the guards day! Sorry I can’t be like this all the time!” She then turned to pulled a young woman out of the line, a woman with whom this woman and said, “Excuse me, it’s been at least three years my mother had become very close, and shot and killed her since I last axed to death one of Eddie’s little friends. They just right in front of my mother. The guards then laughed and released me from the insane asylum and have declared me told her to remember to count one less the following morn- completely cured! It’s been three years, mind you, three years, ing. She told me that from that moment onward, she felt as since I last killed one of my son’s friends! It’s now completely if all sanity and all connection to humanity had left her and safe for your son to be around me, especially after I have that, even after the passage of what was then a little under taken my pills!” forty years, she had to exercise what she described as super- This woman shrieked with horror and ran away. My human willpower in order to function. mother chased after her, yelling, “I’m cured, I tell you! I’m cured! What’s wrong with you? I came to America after the ne of the arguments against the existence of an all-good, war because I heard this is where you get a second chance. Oall-powerful deity is known as the evidential argument Let me prove it to you! I won’t even keep the old axe in the from evil. This argument asserts that it is unlikely that an house when your son comes over!” That evening when I told omnipotent being—that is also perfectly good—would allow my father what happened, we agreed that we would give the horrendous suffering a number of us experience. Such a anything if mom could always be so poised and so in control being must be able to show that even with unlimited power, of such tremendous humor. it could not have prevented even greater suffering from occurring without allowing such egregious horror. Or, this being must be able to show that even with unlimited power, it could not have brought “One of the guards pulled a young woman out of the line, about a great good without allowing such evil a woman with whom my mother had become very close, to occur. Additionally, that being must be able and shot and killed her.” to show that this great good, that not even omnipotence could have actualized without allowing horrible suffering, is worth the agony that this god claims had to occur in order for this great good to happen. This is a very high In 1976, I passed the California Bar Exam on my first hurdle for a deity that is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, attempt. My mother was panic-stricken. She said that she and omnibenevolent. always knew I was a good student but also knew that I freeze What even-greater evil could an all-powerful being have up on exams. She was convinced that my father had bribed been able to prevent only by allowing the suffering that the bar examiners and now all three of us would go to prison. countless human beings have experienced? What great She went to the Beverly Hills Police Department to ask them good could even an omnipotent being only bring about by whether, as an Auschwitz survivor, she could have her sleep- allowing such horrific events? What great good justifies such ing pills and tranquilizers in prison. They called my father to suffering when even an omnipotent being cannot implement take her home. it without the occurrence of such egregious anguish? Before she died in 1985, at the age of sixty-one, my mother Theodicy is the attempt to reconcile God’s supposed omni finally told me some of what happened in Auschwitz that so benevolence and omnipotence with the existence of evil and severely traumatized her. She first told me about having to suffering. Such arguments are ineffective speculation. They stand at attention for hours in the snow and rain and being are just wild guesses about why a supreme being might allow beaten if she moved at all. She described the bare minimum such horrors to occur. amount of food she was given, which was only enough to Theists also try to counter the argument from evil with avoid starvation. She talked about being constantly petrified the “free-will defense.” They claim that God gave us free will that she would be the next one to be killed. She described the and that the exercise of this faculty is of such overwhelming horrible fear that engulfed her when she was sick, because significance that God stands back and allows atrocities to her life depended on hiding any illness or infirmity from be perpetrated by people against other people for the sole her captors. She then told me about being put in charge of purpose of not interfering with anyone’s free will. Why is free

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will of such supreme value that it supercedes all other consid- are justified in responding that a god who created usand erations? If parents see one of their children about to shove knows our minds cannot fault us for our nonbelief, when the other in front of a bus, and they have the ability to stop this very god is intentionally withholding the direct evidence it, they don’t let it happen anyway just so that the child doing and direct explanations that would overcome the inability to the shoving can experience an unfettered exercise of free will. believe that “afflicts” so many of us. A morally perfect god Why should the cosmic parent behave any differently? would permit suffering only if that god had a morally suffi- An omnipotent deity could have imbued us with a greater cient reason for doing so.2 Such a being would then provide default to goodness without inhibiting our free will. Or, God us with satisfactory explanations for suffering so as to remove could have given us unlimited free will but limited our choices such an enormous obstacle to our ability to believe. when it comes to actually harming others. A world with fewer A television producer once told me that he calls himself a choices—but still with choices—would not seem to hamper Jew who takes God very seriously. I responded that I am also the ability to freely choose. If free will entails the ability to a Jew who takes God very seriously and that’s why I can’t make a choice to act, then the decision-making capacity cen- believe in such a being. tral to free will does not also require that we be able to actualize each choice we make, particularly if such actualization would inflict horrible suffering on others. Theists have tried to justify God’s lack of being immediately apparent to us by claiming that if God “A morally perfect god would permit suffering only if that were more directly perceptible, we could not exercise free will to accept or reject belief, because once god had a morally sufficient reason for doing so.” provided with direct evidence of God’s existence, we would have no choice but to believe. Thus, they argue, “divine hiddenness” is a necessary component of our being able to freely choose whether or not to believe. This is really a ridiculous argument. It’s saying that the less Being in Auschwitz provided no benefit to my mother. She evidence we have to make an informed decision, the more did not emerge with greater courage, resilience, strength, or free our decision will be. will power. If God wanted her to develop any of these quali- There is a powerful response to such attempts to reconcile ties, she could have been placed in some kind of boot camp God’s supreme power and goodness with evil, suffering, and instead of a concentration camp. Here, I am focusing on my divine invisibility. This argument is put forth in its most devel- mother’s suffering in Auschwitz and her subsequent devas- oped form by philosopher J. L. Schellenberg in his book Divine tated state of mind. However, the evidential argument from Hiddenness and Human Reason.1 The argument is that an evil against the existence of God obviously does not require all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing god who wants to be recourse to only the Holocaust. The widespread and unspeak- in a relationship with us humans would not be so hidden, in able suffering so integral to human experience, whether in terms of withholding direct evidence that such a being does the past, present, or future, violates our reasonable expecta- in fact exist. This also means that such a god would provide tions of what an all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing some direct explanation for why abominable evil exists. In divine power would allow. the absence of direct evidence of the existence of this divine Notes being, and in the absence of a direct explanation of why so 1. J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddennness and Human Reason (Ithaca, many people suffer so much, those of us who cannot believe N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 2006). in such a supreme being are so reasonable in our nonbelief 2. Paul Draper, “Evolution and the Problem of Evil,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, ed. Louis P. Pojman (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth that we are inculpable in our atheism. We are therefore Publishing Co., 1998), 225. beyond moral reproach for not believing. It is thus far more likely that there does not exist an all- good, all-powerful, and all-knowing deity that wants to be in relationship with us—let alone in a loving relationship—than Edward Tabash is a constitutional lawyer in the Los Angeles area and it is that such a deity exists, but inexplicably withholds direct chair of the board of directors of the Center for Inquiry. He is recognized evidence of its existence and withholds any direct explana- for his legal expertise pertaining to the separation of church and state. tion about why such egregious suffering occurs. He is also one of the more well-known atheist debaters in the United When believers argue that we are not in a position to States. question the ways of a god so infinitely superior to us, we

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 31 Why John Hick’s Solution to the Problem of Evil Makes God Monstrous Shadia B. Drury

otwithstanding that the history of Christianity has been nation—the justice of God requires it. Our dreadful plight is a relentless assault on rationality, Christian “theodicy” entirely of our own making. Yet God in his mercy sent his only Nhas been a tireless effort to provide a rational defense begotten son to pay the penalty for our sins. All this is highly of the goodness of God in the face of the reality of evil. problematic, because if God were omnipotent or had any This is more than a tacit recognition that rational creatures power at all, he could have forgiven Adam and Eve or given cannot live by blind faith alone. Unfortunately, it is also a them another chance. There is absolutely no reason for him self-refuting move because it is logically impossible to assert to insist on the gruesome death of his son for what Thomas simultaneously that (1) God is totally omnipotent; (2) God is Aquinas called his “satisfaction.” Justice did not require it. perfectly good; and (3) evil exists in the world. To make any Orthodoxy from Augustine to Luther and Calvin maintains sense, one of these claims must either be overtly rejected or that even the precious blood of Christ could pay for only a covertly subverted. fraction of the mass of sin in the world. As a result, only a The Orthodox ‘Solution’ few can be saved. These few are the elect whose election is predestined from the start and has nothing to do with their The orthodox “solution” to the problem of evil begins by merits. In other words, Christianity begins with a strident undermining the reality of evil. Augustine and Aquinas monism that declares that only God is real then succumbs to adopted the Platonic view of the identity of goodness and the dualism of the elect and the damned, the children of light reality. Since God is the supreme good, he is also the most and the children of darkness, good and evil, God and Satan. real, followed by the angels, human beings, animals, plants, and so on. In this “chain of being,” evil has no reality: it is the This obscenely pernicious doctrine has the gall to describe absence of good. (This is like saying that rape is the absence itself as a religion of love and to insist on the goodness of of friendliness.) God. Sensitive and discerning Christians must no doubt feel Denying the reality of evil does not make it vanish. deeply ashamed of what passes for orthodoxy. However, it does have the effect of distancing it from God’s In Evil and the God of Love, John Hick makes a heroic effort creative activity by linguistic fiat. Since it makes no sense for to save Christianity from opprobrium. He denounces the God to create nonbeing, it follows that God did not create orthodox doctrine of hell, eternal damnation, and dual pre- evil. He created the world and human beings perfectly good. destination. Instead, he borrows the anti-orthodox view of a But not wanting to create puppets, he made Adam and Eve single predestination—which means that God predestines all free to choose or reject the good, defined as a life with God human beings for salvation, as a result of which hell will be no in perfect obedience. But they chose to disobey, turning away more. For Hick, Hell must be banished if either the goodness from God and hence from goodness. It follows that evil has its or the omnipotence of God is to be seriously entertained. At source in human freedom. the same time, Hick refuses to pretend that evil is not real. He As their descendants, we have inherited their sin. In view of is determined to take it seriously as a real force, while main- our wickedness, we deserve not only death but eternal dam- taining that God is good. But how?

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Two Fatal Flaws of Orthodoxy more elevated in mind. He wanted to create a world with To solve the problem of evil, it is necessary to account for higher goods than pleasure—moral goods such as steadfast- two kinds of evil: natural evil, which includes the suffering of ness, temperance, courage, and self-sacrifice. In Hick’s view, a humans and animals as a result of storms, volcanoes, floods, world without dangers, misfortunes, or calamities would no fires, earthquakes, tsunamis, drought, famine, disease, insan- doubt promote pleasure, but it would not be suitable for the ity, and the like; and moral evil—that is, wickedness, cruelty, development of these moral qualities. For Hick, the world as callousness, greed, malice, and injustice. we know it provides the perfect opportunity for this elevated The orthodox response to natural evil is that it is a pun- project of self-perfection. It is the best possible world for the ishment for sin. Surely, that response cannot account for project of “soul-making.” God’s grand plan is to create the opportunity for all the suffering of animals that are burnt alive in forest fires or humanity to turn away from evil and embrace the good. As children who die in agony from dreadful diseases. For the a consequence, all humanity would come to live in perfect most part, Christianity has ignored the suffering of animals harmony and obedience with God (who is identical with the and accounted for the suffering of children with the obscene good). Christ is the model for this perfection, because he was doctrine of original sin—even though the idea of punishing the only truly perfect human being. His total love and obedi- children for the sins of their parents does not absolve God of ence to God is the exemplary ideal to which all humanity must evil but only makes matters worse. aspire. Hick is convinced that this grand and glorious plan will When it comes to moral evil, the orthodox defense in no doubt outweigh all the evil and suffering of this world. terms of human freedom is hopelessly inadequate. In his article “Evil and Omnipotence,” J. L. Mackie has argued that blaming human freedom for evil makes no sense. If Adam and Eve were created good, then they would be unlikely to choose evil. The conduct of Adam and Eve must be a function of their God-given character. So, God must be responsible for evil (in Nelson Pike, “The orthodox ‘solution’ to the problem of evil editor, God and Evil). begins by undermining the reality of evil.” Hick’s Theodicy Hick accepts the validity of Mackie’s critique. In his theodicy (defense of the goodness of God) outlined in Evil and the God of Love, Hick rejects the orthodox view that God created the first human beings perfectly False Prophets good. Instead, he follows the anti-orthodox view of Irenaeus How does Hick know so much about God’s intentions and of Lyons (130–202) and the progressive view of Friedrich deepest desires, you may ask? His answer is that by reading Schleiermacher (1768–1834), according to whom God did Scripture, especially the New Testament, he has faith that a not create the first human beings perfect but merely perfect good and omnipotent god will not allow evil to triumph in ible. As Hick explains, God had no desire to create a static, the long run. The suffering of humanity, like the suffering of ready-made world; he wanted to create a dynamic world that Christ, will lead to a magnificent end where all will be fulfilled. would allow human beings to play an active role in their own In the final analysis, Hick’s project rests on faith. self-development. What Hick offers is no different from what Jesus offered Unlike the orthodox view, Hick’s eschatological perspec- more than two thousand years ago when he asked his disci- tive situates perfection not in a lost past but in a future that is ples to believe, even though they could not understand, the yet to come. He thinks that Adam was more of a child than a mysterious ways of God. He told them that everything that free agent; this leads him to regard evil as a function of imma- has been “kept secret from the foundations of the world” turity. In what seems like a shocking departure from ortho- will be revealed, “For nothing is secret that shall not be made doxy, Hick admits that God is responsible for evil. However, he manifest” (Matthew 13:35 and Luke 8:17). Moreover, he maintains that this need not impugn God’s goodness because assured them that it would not take too long: “This genera- evil is a necessary component of his grand plan, which will tion shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled” (Luke 21:32). As lead to a wondrous and unsurpassed harmony. things turned out, it did not happen; more than two thou- If moral evil is a function of our immaturity, how can natu- sand years later, it still has not happened. Jesus was a false ral evil be justified? Hick tells us that God was not interested prophet. So, why should we believe his followers, who are in creating a hedonistic paradise. He had something much making the same empty promises?

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 33 Hick’s theodicy is not just a pleasant and comforting and loving; indeed, Christ himself is perfected through his fiction that reconciles us to the reality of evil and suffer- suffering. In my view, this God, like the mother in my exam- ing. Unfortunately, it has seriously pernicious consequences, ple, is either a cruel sadist or a mad bungler whose tactics for because, as I hope to show, it is grounded in a dark and “soul-making” fail to achieve their ends. He is certainly not a deeply flawed conception of morality. God who can set a moral example for humanity. Hick’s conception of God explains why the book of Job Parental Monsters looms so large in his theodicy. God makes a wager with Satan Imagine a mother whose treatment of her child is so cruel that even though he will destroy his house, kill his children, that the neighbors report her to the police, and as a result she and cover his body with boils, Job’s love of God will remain loses custody of her child. She hires a lawyer in an effort to unwavering. Job remains steadfast, and God wins the wager. get her child back. The prosecutor argues that she is an unfit Such a happy ending is appropriate only in a fairy tale, with a mother because she imposed severe and life-threatening most unsalutory message. deprivations on her child. On one occasion, he fell into a well thirty feet deep, which she had purposely covered over with O Felix Culpa! leaves. The child was left there in a state of terror and confu- It may be argued that the book of Job is a shameful chapter sion for two days. When he was finally rescued, he was semi- in the history of God because it describes an occasion when conscious, delirious, and incoherent. On another occasion, he succumbed to a temptation from Satan and that God’s she lit his clothes on fire, and by the time he extracted himself soul-making plan is not all that unrealistic. According to Hick, from the flames, he had painful burns all over his body. On yet there must be fires, floods, storms, and other calamities if human beings are to attain heroic heights of moral perfection. In other words, we need catastrophes if we hope to have heroes. This understanding of morality is modeled on fairy tales in which the prince rescues the “. . . Christianity begins with a strident monism that damsel in distress. This “heroic” morality is parasitic on a continuous stream of calami- declares that only God is real then succumbs to the ties, misfortunes, and misadventures. Such a dualism of the elect and the damned, the children of light world requires a steady stream of treacherous and the children of darkness, good and evil, God and Satan.” hazards, menacing monsters, wicked step- mothers, and malicious genies. Otherwise, the prince would be robbed of all his glory. Hick’s model of moral perfection is the cruci- fied Christ. He is the prince, and humanity is the child or damsel in distress. Jesus rescues humanity from the monster to end all monsters: Satan. another occasion, she withheld food for days and gave him He displays not only courage and tenacity in defeating Satan some water only when he fainted. but also perfect obedience to God’s will, despite the magnitude In response, the lawyer for the defense does not dispute of the agony and torment involved. This dark, ascetic morality the facts as presented by the prosecutor. Instead, he argues requires toil, struggle, suffering, self-sacrifice, even self-immola- that his client is a loving mother who did all these things tion. for the sake of the moral development of her child. She was Christian morality is antithetical to the quiet or eudaimonis- merely trying to create the conditions that would facilitate tic view of morality as one of self-fulfillment and completion, the development of his higher virtues—strength, grit, forti- something that comes easily and naturally, something that is tude, and endurance. She hoped that as her child became an integral component of human happiness. So understood, more perfect, his love for her would also become more com- morality is the cultivation of traits of character such as wis- plete. It was out of love that she inflicted these hardships on dom, generosity, moderation, and justice, which contribute to her child. What jury in its right mind, I ask, would acquit this a happy life with family and friends. In contrast, Christianity mother? What jury would grant her custody of the child? seems incapable of relishing a quiet happiness attained with- Yet Hick believes that this cruel conduct and bizarre rea- out suffering, or a love not premised on alienation. soning are appropriate for our father in heaven. Evil is the Alienation must precede reconciliation, just as the Fall means by which God promotes our perfectibility. Hick assures is necessary for salvation. In the absence of the Fall, the us that through suffering we are made more patient, resilient, Incarnation would be unnecessary. What an alarming

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thought! It made Aquinas cringe. In response, he wrote what fering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating Hick believes to be his most “pregnant” sentence: “O Felix absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage … something so precious will come to pass that it will Culpa (O fortunate crime), which merited such and so great a suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for redeemer” (Summa Theologiae, Part III, Q, 1, A. 3). Hick con- the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood cludes his book by saying that “in their far-reaching implica- they’ve shed; that will make it not only possible to forgive, but tions, these words are the heart of Christian theodicy.” to justify all that has happened . . . but though all that may come to pass, I don’t accept it. . . . I won’t accept it. If the Crucifixion is the model of moral perfection to which we aspire, then God will have to invent new catastrophes in Ivan tells his brother the story of the little serf boy, in heaven so that we can display our Christ-like obedience to his the dark days of serfdom, who was stripped naked on a will in the face of terrible suffering. In other words, a concep- cold and gloomy autumn day and was chased by the noble- tion of human moral perfection modeled on the sacrifice of man’s hounds. They ripped him to pieces while his mother Christ will require an endless string of crimes and calamities, was forced to watch. Ivan tells Alyosha that God’s “eternal not only on Earth but also in heaven. A Deadly Calculus Hick’s theodicy relies on a deadly calculus— namely, that all the evils and suffering in the world will be more than compensated for by the love, harmony, and reconciliation with God that “. . . Hick admits that God is responsible for evil. is to come. In other words, the price in suffering However, he maintains that this need not is a pittance in comparison with the glory yet to impugn God’s goodness. . . .” come. Of course, that depends on who is doing the calculus. The Russian Communist revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin (1870–1924) thought that the earthly paradise his revolution would create was worth the death and suffering of millions. In comparison harmony” is not worth the suffering of that one child. Why to a state of affairs that will secure the happiness of all future must so many children pay for God’s glorious harmony? Why generations, no sacrifice would be too much. Lenin was not indeed? an evil man; he was thoughtful and cultured. In fact, he Lenin and Ivan represent two responses to John Hick’s enjoyed Beethoven’s Appassionata so much that he would God: Lenin mimics the morality of God in a secular guise and have loved to listen to it every day, but he did not allow him- makes the world a living hell, while Ivan rejects him and gives self the pleasure because it made him so happy that he felt back his ticket to heaven. Clearly, it is far better to reject this like patting everyone’s head—and the revolution required monstrous God than to emulate his conduct as the standard that he break a few heads. Lenin was not a sadist. For him, of morality in this world. Far from saving Christianity from the revolution was a necessary evil for the sake of an infinitely opprobrium, far from defending the goodness of God, Hick greater good that would be unsurpassed in joy, justice, and offers a portrait of God that is so repellent that human freedom. Interestingly, Lenin’s moral sensibility is the same as decency requires denouncing him without reservation. the one that Hick attributes to God. It may be objected that, unlike Lenin, God is omnipotent and can therefore bring his plans to fruition. But so far, there has been no evidence that all the suffering will yield the promised glory. Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that the promised glory will come, it does not follow that all the suffering of innocent children and animals is worth it. In The Brothers Karamazov, Russian novelist Fyodor Shadia B. Drury is Canada Research Chair at the University of Regina in Dostoevsky imagines a conversation between Ivan and his Canada. Her books include Terror and Civilization (Palgrave Macmillan, brother Alyosha, who is a Christian monk. Ivan says to his 2004) and Aquinas and Modernity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). She is brother: a columnist for Free Inquiry. It’s not that I don’t accept God, it’s the world created by Him I do not and cannot accept. . . . I believe like a child that suf-

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 35 Is One Person’s Theodicy Another’s Anthropodicy? Preliminary Considerations Anthony B. Pinn

n this article, I want to push past the question of what can with a low anthropology (a negative view of human nature) be said about God in light of moral evil in the world (that and a correspondingly limited confidence in humanity’s abil- Iis, theodicy). Instead, I want to call attention to the need to ity to behave in productive and fruitful ways. Of necessity, address moral evil from a different vantage point: anthropo- such a low opinion of people demands the ability to envision dicy. By anthropodicy I simply mean the effort to understand a robust doctrine of God that balances human shortcomings the nature and meaning of the human in light of moral evil against a cosmic corrective. in the world. That is, what can we say about people in light Thinking about God in a Damaged World of moral evil in the world? But before getting to that, I offer a brief discussion of theodicy as a backdrop. Early church leader St. Augustine and a host of others closer to our own time period have agonized over this theological land mine.1 The theological arguments resulting from these energized discourses are legend. Some proposed that this is the best of all possible worlds; hence, moral evil acted out in the mode of human suf- “. . . A low opinion of people demands the ability to fering doesn’t point to a flaw in the divine logic of the envision a robust doctrine of God that balances human world. Others proposed that this world as we know it shortcomings against a cosmic corrective.” is a “vale of soul-making,” which is to say that even the suffering lodged in human history points to an opportunity to advance ourselves—to be our best spiritual selves. Still others argued for a pedagogical dimension to moral evil by means of which we suffer because we have offended God. For others, the proper response involves Think in terms of the Christian faith—a religious orienta- a rethinking of evil. Rather than being like a substance, evil tion in which notions of God have fueled extended theolo- is the mere privation of good—the diminishing of the good. gizing regarding the nature and meaning of moral evil. Such Some found no way of connecting historically situated moral a loving, concerned, and involved God matched by a world evil and cosmic justifications, and so they chalk it up to mys- marked by misery poses a problem. What can be said about tery. In all these formulations, there is little serious attention God in light of these troubling circumstances? Theodicy, the given to the idea of an evil God because such a formulation theological and philosophical discussion concerning what can runs contrary to God’s description in sacred texts. be said about God in light of the persistence of moral evil, has If there has been no radical rethinking of God as anything figured prominently over the course of centuries. other than good-intentioned (except among some humanist Where there have been Christian thinkers, there have been philosophers; see Stephen Law’s and David Koepsell’s articles efforts to maintain the existence of a loving, kind, just, and in this section), certain theological innovators have proposed compassionate god against the reality of human suffering a softening of the God idea, asserting that God feels what we forged vis-à-vis moral evil. One would expect this wild theo- feel. God unfolds as the universe unfolds. Hence, one can’t logical wrestling in a religious tradition such as Christianity really blame God for evil in that God doesn’t create misery but

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instead experiences it as we experience it. Furthermore, some some intellectual ground. And this leads to a third reason: use suggest a God who makes mistakes. That is to say, God is the dismantling of the God-idea as a way to bring more peo- always concerned with the promotion of the good, but God’s ple into atheism as a logical alternative to an illogical theism. strategies don’t always advance the plan. Along these lines, the Christ event is imagined as God’s effort to bring about Anthropodicy as the Flip Side of Theodicy ultimate good and well-being, but it failed. Oops, that’s God’s But there is another dimension to this moral evil conversation. “bad,” but no worries—God is never without a range of “help- Rigorous critique of theodicy raises another question, in fact ful” options.2 Or, so theists need to hope. begs a particular question: In light of a general optimism on God’s character is certain, and so raising the moral-evil the part of atheists regarding human capacity for good (and question can be a slippery (theological-philosophical) slope evil), how do atheists explain crushing moral evil? That is to that descends to the assumption of disbelief. Again, a great say, what can one say about humanity in light of moral evil in deal of theological and philosophical effort has gone in to the world? Just as Christians feel compelled, despite Tilley, to this topic of theodicy. Yet it’s wise to give consideration to respond to theodicy, atheists need to respond to the issue of theologian Terrence Tilley’s warning: Christians should avoid anthropodicy.4 And by this term, I do not mean “the justifica- theodicy. It isn’t a theological-philosophical game Christians tion of humans by God.” No; I mean the exploration of what 3 can win. Theodicy is the casino game of the theological can be said and known about the human in light of moral evil world. There’s no good response, and even the most tolerable in the world.5 responses still leave something unaddressed. In essence, the- In this sense, anthropodicy is first an embodied interro- odical arguments work to make Christians “OK” with moral gation. It deals with events that force an examination of evil and its historical manifestations: “No cross, no crown causes and ethics, with the priority on ethics. Can one speak . . . We are tried by fire . . . God doesn’t give us a burden we of humans as good in light of the moral evil (think in terms can’t bear” and so on. In the abstract, such arguments make of systemic modalities of harm) they produce? Can one be headway in safeguarding the most essential element of the optimistic concerning human life in light of misery, pain, and Christian faith—a good and active god—but at a large cost: suffering in the world? the integrity and well-being of humanity. Theological anthropology (that is, the discussion of the theological nature and meaning of the human) and ethics are held hostage by a divine figure that is at best sado- “. . . The Christ event is imagined as masochistic: first it inflicts pain on its creation and then on itself (pain is the gateway to pleasure). The very logic of sin, God’s effort to bring about ultimate good and evil, salvation, and redemption—key conceptual frame- well-being, but it failed. Oops. . . .” works that buttress Christian faith—are tied to the necessity of misery hitched to the destruction of bodies for the well-being of a “soul” foreign to empirical considerations. With all this in mind, how could theodicy be anything other One could consider this call to address moral evil the athe- than a problem, an opening into the bizarre behavior of God ist’s atheological challenge to face. Atheists who are “awake” and God’s minions? Again, as Tilley remarks, Christians should in the world provide at least an implicit anthropodicy (per- avoid theodicy at all cost. Yet, this warning not to entertain haps tied to an atheology). But shouldn’t it be an explicit theodical argumentation only serves to prompt unwise investigations—anything to safeguard the “tradition.” dimension of the atheist’s approach to life, to movement Atheists have targeted this theodical quagmire for sev- through the world? eral reasons. First, to point out and attack the illogical and What I share in the remainder of this piece are preliminary unreasonable underpinning for the Christian faith: a loving, thoughts on such an atheological move in face of moral evil. kind, just, and compassionate God possessing (any degree The Enlightenment (roughly 1620–1780s) urged humanity of) power. If this notion of God must be taken out, then the to take upon itself responsibility for human life, for the con- very foundation of Christianity is damaged deeply. Second, tent and details of human history. Its thinkers were marked in and as a corollary, atheists use this theological-philosophical a general sense by a strong optimism, tinted with a somewhat dilemma to advance an atheist agenda. This is low-hanging teleological view of history. Yet so many atrocities resisted theological-philosophical fruit for atheists in that, as Tilley the logic of the Enlightenment even as the years pushed rightly notes, Christians can’t provide a good response to into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—developments moral evil. Through this rhetorical maneuver, atheists gain such as the emergence of Africans as subjects of history,

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 37 colonization that urged attention to the “other,” war, and argues, and one might think of it as providing a discourse so on—that they modified this optimism (at least, some did) on the fundamental questions of human existence: Who are and urged attention to the Enlightenment’s “underbelly.” we? What are we? When are we? Why are we? Theology (or Postmodernity’s challenges to the intellectual assumptions atheology) is simply a tool promoting a particular archeolog- of the Enlightenment, however, have not wiped out the ical function in that it brings to the surface key questions and nagging challenge of moral evil. To clarify my meaning, the concerns. This is all said as a way to emphasize and safeguard Enlightenment (and its postmodern “corrections”), while the significance of a certain range of interrogations that athe- advancing human knowledge and know-how, also marked ists shouldn’t surrender to theists. out problematic categorizations of life—fostering a sense As a starting point for anthropodicy, the idea of God has of difference as a problem to solve, with those of European been dismissed, banished to youthful ignorance and fear. descent controlling the content and rules of engagement. This much is evident—quite evident. In its place, there is the Suffering, pain, and misery continue to shape the language of human need to assess accountability and responsibility. What life. And, I would argue, for atheists anthropodicy is the appro- does one make of anthropodicy in light of such perspectives?9 priate grammar of this language. In fact, the Enlightenment Is anthropodicy anything more than the given-ness of human and postmodern responses to it constitute something of an existence or the “thingness” of our existence? There is no god, anthropodicy—a multidisciplinary anthropodicy—but one in but rather an earthy “love” that allows for interrogation of need of some correcting. human life and its various points of connection and interac- tion.10 We are material that speaks itself into being, and this is further circumscribed by the performance of flexible markers of identity such as race, gender, sexuality, and so on. “. . . Raising the moral-evil question can be a I propose an anthropodicy that doesn’t assume answers premised on the human ability to resolve slippery (theological-philosophical) slope that all problems. Rather, the idea is to first confront the descends to the assumption of disbelief.” problem and second to gain perspective on how humans have fostered harm and promoted well-being. Then, and only then, one marks out steps to address (not necessarily resolve) these trappings of moral evil. What does it mean to attempt justification of human goodness in light of moral evil in the There are linguistic challenges accompanying this shift to a world? And what ethics might be suggested? human-centered discussion of evil. First, according to scholars Anthropodicy, unlike theodicy, isn’t about the source of such as philosopher Frederick Sontag, such an anthro-fo- evil. No, it has a much more focused ethics orientation. The cused discourse maintains a grammar of discovery indebted source is clear—humans. The question, then, becomes what 6 to a theological orientation buttressing theistic sensibilities. “ought” humans do about what they have fostered? To However, this take makes several problematic assumptions the extent there is concern for origins, it is about the char- that are apparent when one pushes beyond the etymology acteristics of humanity, perhaps the neuroscience-related of the term theology and looks at its use, its application. First, organization of human being and doing. In the context of it assumes that theology is static and constitutes more than all this, we seek meaning—a logic or “rhythm” to life. We are a methodology for exploring human experience within the in the world but uncomfortably so. We are individuals who, context of human history. Developments such as philosopher on some level, crave connection, although these connections Mark Taylor’s atheology, as well as its antecedents such as aren’t always physically arranged. Instead, they are just as the “Death of God” movement—and to a lesser extent even easily defined by agreed-upon principles and ideals that have theologian Paul Tillich’s existential theology—raise questions no relationship to physical geography. concerning Sontag’s pronouncement and his framing of the nature/function of theology: gods aren’t required. The What Focusing on ‘Anthro…’ Might Mean absence or even “death” of God(s) doesn’t wipe out the need Anthropodicy demands clear and precise attention to the con- to wrestle with metaphysical questions in an interested (not ditions of life in the world—racism, sexism, classism, homopho- disinterested) manner, while it does shift the “material” used bia, and so on—and promotes development of a cartography as “data.”7 of human activity related to these conditions. This, if nothing Second, and related to the first corrective, theology is a else, might entail the predominance of social-justice issues second-order enterprise, as theologian Gordon D. Kaufman8 within atheistic circles, not as an add-on but rather as a signif-

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icant component of thinking about what it means for humans information, when processed, urges issues of anthropodicy to be humans within the context of this world. that the singularity might resolve in certain ways by trans- More to the point, something about anthropodicy involves forming atheology not into thanatology but rather a new thanatology—the study of death. That is to say, to struggle language of “technology.” Even if atheology remained (for with moral evil as a human responsibility involves recognition that matter, even if theology remained), it would involve of and preparation for death but death as the philosopher code, a program, addressing particular and new functions Montaigne understood it and as the moralist Thoreau “lived” and concerns. Or, effort toward the singularity might serve to it at Walden. You will recall that Thoreau alerts the reader intensify our preoccupation with death. to the fact that he wanted to live deliberately while in the Perhaps the central concern is preparation to die well woods so that at the end he would know he had indeed through our efforts to promote more good in the world than lived. Thinking and doing take place within the context of evil, to think and “do” in ways that promote well-being to loss—of change. As compelling as this is, as Thoreau roman- the extent we can. The goal is to gain lucidity concerning the ticizes it, such is not the case of necessity.11 Anthropodicy is a nature of struggle and the outcomes of that effort. heuristic of sorts that promotes accountability and responsibility on some level, if for no other reason than it forces confrontation. It involves critical engagement with our subjectivity. In our current environment, we experience a type of ontological, “. . . In light of a general optimism on the part of atheists epistemological, and existential friction that wears regarding human capacity for good (and evil), how do us down and fosters anthropodical questions. atheists explain crushing moral evil?” Technology and/or Anthropodicy? In the context of atheism and humanism, anthropodicy is also a question of technology in two senses: first as the building of new capacities based on science and, second, as some philosophers argue, as practices geared Could longer life be a new modality of misery? Freedom from toward particular concerns and constructions and refine- the constraint of the body could give way to new and more ments of individual and collective organization. sophisticated modalities of repression. Such technological Think in terms of artificial intelligence and the potentiality advances might destroy certain types of moral evil but might also of singularity, for instance. Is singularity—the transcendence reinforce others. For instance, economic classes could intensify of intelligence beyond the confines of the material body— around the singularity in that only those of means might have the perfect union between human and “machine” that ends access to the benefits of technological advance: economic strug- anthropodicy? Might singularity be the answer for atheists on gle might mark out a persistent source of anthropodical concern. moral evil, as the grand unity of God is considered the answer Sad to say, there is reason to believe anthropodical issues might for theists? Is technological transcendence the destruction persist despite advances, despite effort otherwise. Yet this isn’t a of anthropodicy to the extent that it consumes the human call for inactivity, for “accepting” things as they are. Rather, I call flaw that makes possible—likely, really—destruction and suf- for informed action—for effort to minimize the harm we do fering? The threat of death is no longer looming; traditional and maximize life’s ability to flourish. If attention to anthropo- sources of pain (such as disease) are reduced if not destroyed. dicy does nothing else, it has the potential to keep us ever What is left to fester, to spark the angst of moral evil, once mindful of how we have gone wrong and ways that we might such limitation and shortcomings of human embodiment are act differently. resolved? Notes What does it mean to be “moral” within the context of the singularity, a context in which the full vitality and potential 1. See, for example: St. Augustine, Confessions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); St. Augustine, City of God (New York: Penguin, of life has been maximized? What would be the nature of 2003); Gillian R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (New York: Cambridge University moral evil in a context without the constraints of embodied Press, 1990). bodies? Can a mode of technological “transcendence,” so to 2. For an example see: John Cobb Jr. and David Griffin, Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, speak, occur by means of which the terrain of engagement 1982); David Griffin, God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy (Louisville: is no longer defined by the strict dimensions of a rough and Westminster/John Knox, 2004). inhospitable physical environment? 3. Terrence Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2000). The body is a cipher of sorts, or a circuit board of a partic- 4. For an early example of attention to this issue, see Frederick ular type by means of which data is collected and stored. This Sontag’s essay in John B. Cobb Jr. and David R. Griffin, Encountering

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 39 Evil: Live Options in Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, Press, 9. Rene Girard, Evil and the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 1982), 137–66; Anthony Pinn, The End of God-Talk: An African American University Press, 1977). Humanist Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), chapters 10. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: 3 and 5; William R. Jones, Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Vintage International, 1955); Camus, The Rebel (New York: Vintage Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996). International 1956). 5. John Weborg, “Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Study in Anthro 11. Michel Montaigne, The Complete Essays (New York: Penguin, podicy,” Anglican Theological Review, October 1, 1979: 483–97. 1993); Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Princeton: Princeton University 6. See Frederick Sontag, “Anthropodicy or Theodicy? A Discussion Press, 2004). with Becker’s The Structure of Evil” in The Journal of the American Academy of Religion XLIX/2: 267–74. 7. For instance, Mark Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology Anthony B. Pinn is the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and a (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987); Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God (Indianapolis: Bobbs- professor of religion at Rice University. He is also director of Research for the Merrill Company, 1966); Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (New York: Institute for Humanist Studies. Pinn is the author of thirty-five books, including Oxford University Press, 1964). Humanism: Essays in Race, Religion, and Popular Culture (2015). 8. Gordon D. Kaufman, An Essay on Theological Method (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1975).

Epilogue Judy Walker and Tom Flynn

he preceding articles in the special section, “Atheodicy only slightly less fearsome to consider oneself, say, the work and the Impossibility of God,” share a hidden subtext. In of a creator who judged the world’s manifold evils a fair price Taddition, at least by implication, they evoke a question to pay so that humans could enjoy free will—or improve their of great importance for secular humanists. character, as Shadia B. Drury explores in her discussion of the The hidden subtext is the emotional salience of the prob- theodicy of the philosopher of religion John Hick. lem of evil. Whether we confront natural disaster, disease (as People don’t just think about ideas such as these—they Susan Jacoby did with the death of the man she loved and as feel them, with relentless intensity. Some humanists and James A. Metzger did with his incurable rheumatic illness), or atheists find that troubling; too often, we focus solely on human depravity (which Edward Tabash’s mother faced so reason and logic at the expense of passion. Or we try to. The terrifyingly at Auschwitz), human encounters with life’s evils problem is that people don’t actually work that way, and so have a visceral impact. They resonate in the passional register we really shouldn’t try to either. We can accomplish more if more intensely than in any abstract cognitive domain. The we embrace rather than struggle to dismiss the effectiveness same is true when religious believers deal seriously with their of emotion in service to reason. experiences with evil and what those might mean in light of In different ways, each essay in this section has demon- the deity they believe in. It is fearsome to imagine oneself the strated a command not just of reasoned argument but of pawn of Stephen Law’s evil god or as casual roadkill for H. a sense of “experiential feel” that taps into the strength of P. Lovecraft’s aloof demiurge Cthulhu as described by David human emotion in the face of evil. By harnessing passion, we Koepsell. But it is no less fearsome to view oneself as a pow- can bolster our resolve to face and seek to ameliorate the evils erless subject of the capricious god proposed by John Calvin, that we encounter. Not the least of those evils is the dilemma who chose before the dawn of time the specific few humans of believing in a deity so hideous as to allow all the other evils who would know salvation while the rest would burn. It is that torment humankind.

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That brings us to the question of great importance that while I was at Sunday school, arguing with the teacher that I all of the essays implied and that Anthony Pinn’s posed more should not have to fear the wrath of a god of love. God was explicitly: Why should nontheists bother talking about athe surely out to get me for not believing in him and his essential odicy, anyway? Secular humanists and atheists have either goodness. For many years afterward, I lived with a sense of set aside the belief in a traditional god or never believed at dread that either God or the universe itself was a malevolent all. If the orthodox insist on torturing themselves by imagin- personality to the core. I have found peace and comfort and ing that every evil around them has a divine architect—and joy in atheism and in my secular humanist worldview. I am then conclude that the most reasonable response to such free from existential fear.” horrors is to worship their perpetrator—that is so much the Tom Flynn. “I was a very conservative Roman Catholic. I worse for believers, but some would say it is not our problem. believed in every doctrine, every ritual, only to suffer disillu- After all, most believers reject out of hand our gut-simple, sionment as a teen when the reforms of the Second Vatican slash-through-the-Gordian-knot solution to the problem of evil: the idea that no god exists and the universe has no idea what it’s doing to us, hence no one need pose the anguished question “Why?” Since most believers won’t follow us there, why should we humanists, atheists, and other philosophical naturalists continue engaging “. . . Human encounters with life’s evils have a with atheodicy? Why not just say “I’m sorry believ- visceral impact. They resonate in the passional register ers have this problem” and walk away? As noted, more intensely than in any abstract cognitive domain.” Pinn’s essay in this section suggests explicitly that it might be time for nonbelievers to go yet further, to close the book on the old problem of evil and redirect that energy toward seeking a greater understanding of the evils within our natures to promote the good of our common humanity. Council (1962–1965) upended so much of parish life. That Pinn challenges us to reject both theodicy and atheodicy started me asking hard questions about my faith. Getting for anthropodicy. This approach will hold appeal for many the answers was a labored, harrowing crawl; it took me fully humanists and atheists, though we suspect that it is indi- six years to escape the complex tissue of untruths that had viduals who do not harbor a personal sense of having been been my faith. I spent far too much of that time in a sort of harmed by religion who will see the clearest path toward emotional paralysis, intellectually convinced that God did not anthropodicy open before them. Individuals who have been exist but terrified to step into the proverbial abyss and accept harmed by religion—the present authors included—may be emotionally what I knew to be true.” more likely to find continued value in exploring issues of We stress, however, that while we were harmed by reli- theodicy and atheodicy. Speaking for ourselves, we feel that gion, and while that suffering has affected us profoundly, for better or worse, we have unfinished business to complete we do not regard ourselves as victims. Instead we have come before we’ll be ready to stride into Pinn’s anthropodical to understand our sufferings and built upon them platforms future. from which to offer help, personally and through our writ- Though we (Walker and Flynn) hail from different backgrounds, we both grew up in traditional Christian settings ings, to others following their own paths away from religious and arrived at our current atheistic viewpoints by struggling pasts. free of the dogmas in which we’d been inculcated. That pro- And we understand why some atheists who never knew cess combined reason and passion; neither our intellects nor religion or who grew up in a faith so liberal that they never our senses of moral justice could accept the contradictions, learned to “fear God” might not feel the importance of the casual awfulness of the doctrines we’d been spoon-fed. wrestling with atheodicy as we do. For those of us who have Each in our own way, we looked behind every curtain, ques- known such pain—and thus for the humanist and atheist tioned every false certainty, until we arrived at the naturalis- community as a whole, for we are members of that commu- tic, humanistic worldview we embrace today. nity—an approach that fails to engage with problem-of-evil Judy Walker. “I was a twelve-year old, deeply skeptical issues underestimates religion’s potential to do harm and Presbyterian when my bipolar father killed himself at home leaves important matters unaddressed.

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 41 Our path attaches great importance to understanding the Lisa Bauer’s harrowing essay “Subjection and Escape: An problem of evil and its implications for traditional believers American Woman’s Muslim Journey.” Bauer’s 19,300-word and society at large—and to expressing a forthright, unre- tale of a conflicted adult’s conversion to Islam, prolonged pentant atheism. Properly understood, atheism is the absence sexual abuse by her imam, and an eventual escape into athe- of belief in a deity or, by extension, in any sort of agency or ism was judged so important by the editors that it was serial- intent ascribed to the cosmos. That sort of atheism is a neces- ized over three issues of the magazine. Insightful writing on sary precondition for secular humanism. Rooted in philosoph- the emotional subtext of humanism and atheism has come ical and scientific naturalism, it finds liberation in knowing from, among others, Greta Christina (“Do We Concede the that the cosmos did not design us, does not know us, and has Ground of Death Too Easily?” FI, June/July 2012 and “Can We no plan for us. We think that attaining—and advocating for— Rationally Accept Our Irrationality?” FI, October/November that sort of atheism is an indispensable part of the process 2013) and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (“Feminism, that can lead us toward a more humanistic future. Religion, and ‘Mattering,’” FI, December 2013/January 2014). More recently, FI devoted four 2014 issues to “The Faith I Left Behind,” a collection of first-person narratives of disaffection from religion and its replacement by humanism or atheism. Such was the popularity of this feature that “The Faith I Left Behind” has become a recurring department in the magazine. Submissions to the original “. . . Too often, we focus solely on reason and logic feature (along with some additional essays not at the expense of passion. Or we try to. The problem published in the 2014 series) have recently been is that people don’t actually work that way. . . .” gathered into The Faith I Left Behind, a new book from Inquiry Press. Just out from the same publisher is a new “best of Free Inquiry” anthology whose title says it all: The Harm Done by Religion. What all these efforts have in common is that they demonstrate not only the possibility but the necessity of expressing our naturalism, atheism, and humanism in ways that yoke together reason The Effectiveness of Emotion in Service to Reason and passion. What else might we do with this energy? One possibility Don’t base your atheism on emotion. We are rational. We are not wounded warriors. We are normal. would be to reach out further—in writing and in ordinary conversation—to object when journalists and everyday peo- —Anonymous (an atheist) ple nod to standard theodicies in the face of tragedy. More of Some old-line rationalists think that showing emotion is a us need to say more clearly that no, it’s not all right to respond weakness, so they advise not showing it. Why in the world to a school shooting or a tsunami or the sinking of a refugee should people such as us recoil from expressing emotion? boat by speculating that it’s all in God’s plan or that exposure Isn’t it emotion that validates the passions that launched so to such evils is the price we pay for the possibility of salvation. many of us on lifelong commitments to seek equal rights and No, it’s not okay to ask the sole survivors of a jumbo-jet crash equal time in the public square for nonbelievers? Secularist whether they have thanked God for the “miracle” of their expression has tended to be bloodless. But why should we survival—at least, not unless that reporter is also prepared to settle for that? Do we not bleed? ask why God required all those other passengers to die. We Just acting on emotion can be destructive, of course. It’s also need to be more open with the visceral experiences that another thing to harness well-understood emotion, to wield have colored our own flights from faith. passion in service to reason. In that way we tap the energy to This phase of the discussion leads toward two conclusions. press for change rather than mutely accept the evils around First, it is not only acceptable but absolutely necessary that us. Why should we quail from, say, telling moving personal humanists and atheists should evoke both reason and pas- stories that enable our publics not just to know but to under sion in our responses to evil and injustice. If we make our stand who we are and why we care? rhetoric bloodless, we cede the power to persuade. Second, Fortunately, recent years have seen greater openness to we need to let that righteous anger show—to object in pow- emotional expression within the movement. In Free Inquiry’s erful ways—when media commentators or fellow Americans October/November 2009 issue, Richard Dawkins introduced offhandedly invoke theodicy to paper over tragedies that

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demand a more integrative response. still) that we deserve them. Reaching the Unconvinced, Both Outside and Atheodicy, Yea or Nay? Inside the Movement I’m sick and tired of hearing how people were damaged by I like to think that there’s something out there. religion. —Anonymous (a none) —Anonymous (a skeptic)

Sincere naturalists find this sort of casual mysticism exasper- Humanists, atheists, and skeptics share a commitment to ating. Does engaging with the problem of evil equip us with critical thinking. Yet the topic of atheodicy—and especially, tools to respond to such bargain-bin spirituality more effec- the question of whether it’s worthwhile to engage the tively? It does, especially when we pair discussion of atheod- subject—remains controversial. Chalk up much of that to icy with a firm naturalism grounded in science. the gulf between freethinkers who have been personally As we contemplate a universe brimming with evils, it is harmed by religion and those who have not, as we’ve seen. terrifying to imagine that some faceless, nebulous some- To those undamaged, carrying on about atheodicy may well thing (a “force”) might be in charge of it all. The notion that seem pointless. On the other hand, those of us who suffered we are pawns in the hands of “something out there” is far damage often fail to understand why those who did not see more disturbing than the traditional Christian world-picture. After all, the Christian god in some way resembles us (we are supposedly created in his image) and allegedly loves us. That “numinous force” could be Cthulhu-like in its “By harnessing passion, we can bolster our uncaring deafness to our entreaties. How that resolve to face and seek to ameliorate concept represents an improvement over traditional monotheism escapes us. the evils we encounter.” Atheodicy gives us tools to show the “spiritual but not religious” that—as Stephen Law has demonstrated so clearly—any standard-issue god is at least as likely to be evil as to be good. Moving into a more passional register (which, again, so little danger in being accommodating toward religion. we should not fear to do), if we open ourselves to the true We, the damaged, are also more likely to worry that atheism, enormity of suffering in the world, it seems actively immoral that indispensable precursor to secular humanism, faces mar- to believe that a god who has authored so much agony could ginalization within the movement. We see a problem with be good. What can be more morally repellent than the wor- pronouncements such as “you can be a humanist in practice shipper who stands heedlessly overlooking a sea of pain and even if you choose to believe in some higher power”* that boasts of how he or she has been singled out for blessings? those undamaged by religion tend not to. But how can we reach the nones, agnostics, and apatheists Is there a way to demonstrate to nones, skeptics, and (humanism’s potential “growth markets,” if you will) with accommodationists that engaging the subject of atheodicy these arguments? After all, the less one is willing to postulate remains worthwhile? One possible approach comes from about one’s mystical object (and it’s hard to postulate less the introduction one of us (Flynn) wrote for the Inquiry Press than to draw the line at calling it “something out there”), the anthology The Harm Done by Religion (mentioned earlier). A easier it becomes to just assume that somewhere among the few pages after asking “How much further advanced science, numinous vagueness, some good must dwell. Perhaps now is medicine, and the humanities might be today if the Roman the time to tighten up the conversation toward the truth that church had not capitalized on the power vacuum resulting will set us atheists free. If the persistence of evil makes it ille- from the fall of Rome to drag the West into the Dark Ages,” gitimate to believe in a traditional God exhibiting personality, Flynn wrote the following: caring, and intent, we should be the ones gently but firmly Imagine a scenario of searing irony. Imagine that ten years insisting that there exists no better ground for imagining that from now, we discover a world-killer space rock headed the cosmos possesses such attributes. If there is no God, there straight for Earth. The planet’s greatest scientists and engi- is also no Force, no “something out there.” Precisely because neers and thinkers and business leaders feverishly confer. neither anyone nor anything intended us or cares for us, we *Carl Coon, “Humanism v. Atheism,” Progressive Humanism blog, July can confront life’s evils without the burden of fearing that 16, 2000. Accessed November 5, 2015, at http://www.progressive some cosmic prankster scattered them in our path, or (worse humanism.com/progressive-humanism/humanism-vs-atheism/.

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 43 Heads downcast, they emerge from their council chamber and announce that the asteroid cannot be deflected. If only our technology had been fifty years more advanced, they say dejectedly, we would stand Definitions a good chance of turning it away. What harm will we “credit” to the Dark Ages then? Below are brief definitions of some of the “terms of art” Another approach is Walker’s “Narrative Naturalism” used in this Epilogue. thesis, which provides a science-backed problem-solv- Atheism: “from Gr. atheos, without a god: a (priv.) and theos ing method that harnesses the power of narrative to (god).”—Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary help humanists alleviate suffering and create meaning Atheism is sometimes popularly supposed to demand after tragedy and loss.* the active denial of God’s existence, or even a faith in God’s nonexistence as unbending—and irrational—as the faith of Atheodicy and Anthropodicy believers. This is untrue; all atheism requires is the lack of Pinn challenges us to set atheodicy (and related con- belief in any god. troversies) aside and leap straight into anthropodicy. Humanism: “Any system of thought or action concerned As noted above, we think this may be an attractive with the interest and ideals of people . . . the intellectual option for humanists and atheists who hold few per- and cultural movement . . . characterized by an emphasis on sonal grievances against religion. Even some in this human interests rather than on the natural world or religion.” group may feel that important “work in the trenches” —Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary remains in order to win for humanists, atheists, natu- “Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance which ralists, and other freethinkers their full say and sway in affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility the public square—and that continued engagement to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethics based with issues of theodicy and atheodicy may have a role on human and other natural values in a spirit of reason and to play in achieving that. After all, religion and its step- free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and child, “spirituality,” remain powerful; freethought in it does not accept supernatural views of reality.” —Minimum its varied forms still faces marginalization and discrim- Statement adopted by the International Humanist and Ethical ination. Many secular activists will see a need to wield Union, 1996 the power of mind and heart to encourage believers to Naturalism: “The system of thought holding that all phenom- consider the moral travesties at the core of their faiths, ena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws, even as they beckon agnostics and nones to recognize without attributing moral, spiritual, or supernatural signifi- the benefits of embracing a fully intentionless cosmos. cance to them.”—American Heritage Dictionary This feature will not, of course, be the final word. “. . . Naturalists maintain that there is insufficient scientific No doubt, the discussion will continue as all of us in evidence for spiritual interpretations of reality and the postu- our broader movement work together to foster a sec- lation of occult causes.”—Humanist Manifesto 2000 ular society. Secular: “Pertaining to the world or to things not spiritual or sacred; relating to or connected with worldly things; disas- *The article was published in Free Inquiry (April/May 2010) and sociated from religious teachings or principles; not devoted reprinted in Secular Humanism and Its Commitments: The Best of to sacred or religious use. …” —Webster’s New Universal Free Inquiry (Inquiry Press, 2012). It is available online at http:// Unabridged Dictionary www.centerforinquiry.net/docs/NarrativeNaturalism.pdf. Secularism: “. . . Indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations.” —Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary

Judy Walker is a Center for Inquiry (CFI) fellow specializing in Secular humanism: “A comprehensive nonreligious life stance that incorporates a naturalistic philosophy, a cosmic out- philosophical naturalism and a former CFI board member. She look rooted in science, and a consequentialist ethical sys- has degrees in sociology, anthropology, and law and served as tem.” —“What Is Secular Humanism?” Council for Secular assistant Colorado attorney general in the Higher Education Unit. Humanism website For several years afterward, she worked in Development at the The necessity of atheism as a precursor to secular human- University of Colorado Foundation. ism is reflected in the latter’s nonreligious nature and in its Tom Flynn is the editor of Free Inquiry, executive director debts to naturalism and a scientific cosmic outlook, all of of the Council for Secular Humanism, and editor of the New which presume the nonexistence of a traditional god. Encyclopedia of Unbelief (2007).

44 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org Faisal Saeed Al Mutar The Syrian Refugee Crisis and the Need for Political Solutions continued from p. 8

Saddam Hussein—one that would have inclusive and fight terrorism regard- whom many people fear would move laid the foundation for an inclusive less of its sect of origin. People must to the countries they are escaping to, government that would have reduced not feel threatened by the possibility because there would no longer be the sectarian tensions that built up that if another sect takes over, it will extremists. over decades of dictatorship. One fact favor its members or support cleansing. What is needed right now in the about dictators that is mostly ignored In Iraq we had an example of that. United States is less polarization in the is that they kill everyone who opposes It was called the Ayad Allawi tran- discussion about refugees and more their rule. Only those who don’t care sitional regime. Unfortunately, then– action toward helping Iraq and Syria about life become the opposition. Who President G. W. Bush backed it because achieve secular and more inclusive gov- are these people who don’t care about he wanted to score political points in ernments. This doesn’t necessarily life? The jihadists. domestic politics by showing that he mean only putting American boots on That is what has led to the rise of ISIS “built a democracy” in Iraq. the ground but rather working within and the Sunni majority in Syria—seeing What can be learned from the Iraq the international community to make ISIS as a better alternative than the mistake can be used to solve both of sure a political transition is possible. Shia-backed dictatorship of Bashar Al- Iraq’s and Syria’s current problem of That includes working with countries in Assad or not seeing the Assad regime ISIS controlling almost a third of each the region such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, as a regime worth defending. The country. New options need to be on Iran, and also Russia, which is now play- majority of those who refuse to pick the table now, because they are the ing an important role in protecting sides in this ugly conflict that has been only viable way to end this conflict and Assad as well as destroying the chances going on for more than a half-decade reduce the number of refugees fleeing for any alternative, third political party now are those who escape and become these countries. to develop. refugees. Their numbers will keep ris- There is no doubt that there are ing as the conflict gets more and more certain people who would not be able brutal. to live even under the transitional Faisal Saeed Al Mutar was born in Iraq and There is a need right now to break government, and that includes LGBTs now lives in the United States. He is a writer, public speaker, web designer, and social activ- this cycle of violence and support a and members of religious minorities ist who founded the Global Secular Humanist third-party government, even if it in both Iraq and Syria. But the num- Movement and Secular Post. He is a commu- doesn’t currently have enough popular ber of people needing asylum would nity manager at Movements.org, a division of support to function on its own. This still be reduced by a huge percentage Advancing Human Rights. transitional regime must be secular and and would not include the extremists

Ed Buckner and Mandisa Thomas Should Atheist and Humanist Organizations Broaden Their Purpose? cont. from p. 9 attacks on atheists via blasphemy laws ing and correcting the racism, sexism, empty gesture that a powerful coali- or declarations. and homophobia within our organization of local atheist organizations in But organizations can and should have tions and movements, even as we remain Atlanta (most of them led by whites) well-defined focuses—which should not part of a complex society in which such chose, pretty much by acclamation, a immediately subject them to accusations matters remain deeply troubling prob- strong black woman as the leader and that they fail to care about other issues or lems—real problems (or sets of them), primary voice of the coalition. communities. not merely academic ones, that have real Perhaps all these actions could be One of us has led and the other now and serious consequences for our fellow tokenism, but all the evidence we’ve leads an atheist or secular-humanist human beings. seen is to the contrary. The diverse organization, but neither of us claims to It could be seen as mere tokenism speakers at conferences and other sec- speak for other atheists or for organiza- to include a dramatically larger pro- ular events have offered widely vary- tions in this or in other matters. In our portion of minorities of all sorts at, ing takes on all of our mutual inter- experience (and each of our experiences say, an American Atheists convention. ests. They participated primarily not are necessarily only that of a single per- It could possibly be mere tokenism to as representatives of particular ethnic son, limiting each of us—like everyone have a black woman, a gay man, and a or interest groups but as atheists and else—in our ability to fully understand Hispanic woman as voting directors on humanists with varying experiences others’ experiences), atheist and human- the board of American Atheists or to and prescriptions. The leaders we’ve ist organizations have made crucial, have similar improvements in diversity seen embraced as our colleagues have important, meaningful strides in address- in other organizations. It could be an (Continued on page 48)

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 45 Greta Christina A Response to an Almost Good But Limited and Very Troubling Argument against Trigger Warnings continued from p. 7

traumatic content in some academic “We like trigger warnings; we don’t like not the only ones”). settings is irrelevant to the case for trig- it when they aren’t used; we’re going More importantly, Harley’s infor- ger warnings in general and to my col- to consume more media that uses them mation about PTSD and other men- umn in particular. I didn’t say anything and less media that doesn’t.” And there tal illness is wildly inaccurate. Yes, it’s about what content should or should are extensive debates about trigger impossible to create content notes for not be taught in academic settings or warnings in social media, where the every trigger for everyone with PTSD about providing alternative content, only enforcement is social pressure and or other trauma-related mental illness. or who gets to decide about that or the harshest consequence is hearing I said so in my original column. But anything similar. I didn’t get into those “I’m not going to listen to you any- as I also said in my column, there are discussions at all. I argued that trigger more.” Harley’s essay almost entirely a handful of common traumas that warnings are generally a good idea; ignores the world of media and con- a very large number of people have tent outside academia—and her core experienced, and it’s just not that hard argument is irrelevant in that world. to include trigger warnings for those. And her essay is a terrible, terrible Yes, it can be helpful for people with argument for why individual writers PTSD or other trauma disorders to be or other content creators shouldn’t exposed to content related to that use trigger warnings if they wish to. trauma. But the therapeutic standard Contrary to Harley’s implication, I did of care is that this exposure should “. . . Academia is only one not propose that trigger warnings be controlled—not sprung on people should be Free Inquiry policy or that all without warning. And it’s wildly inac- arena where debates about writers here should be required to use curate to describe content warnings as trigger warnings and content them. I objected (briefly) to the fact “an arbitrary person, even the author notes are happening.” that I wanted to use a trigger warning of a piece, [deciding] beforehand what in a Free Inquiry column and was not could be detrimental for others.” No. permitted to do so. No, no, no. Content warnings are not the product of a random person decid- ll of this assumes that everything ing what could be detrimental for oth- AHarley says in her essay is true ers. Content warnings are a not-at-all and fair. But I am now finished with arbitrary response to large numbers steel-manning. There are serious prob- of people saying, “This specific thing is that they’re similar to spoiler alerts, lems with both the accuracy and the detrimental to me.” which very few people oppose; and fairness of Harley’s essay, and I’m going But Harley’s description of PTSD and that accepting spoiler alerts but vehe- to talk about them. other mental illness isn’t just inaccu- mently opposing trigger warnings is Some of her assertions are simply rate. Her thinking about it is, to say the both irrational and callous. Advocating mistaken, such as the assertion that least, deeply troubling. Harley seems to for trigger warnings is not the same as spoilers and spoiler alerts are objec- think that she knows how to deal with calling for censorship or even the lim- tive, simple, and clear while trauma the suffering of mental illness better itation of content, and Harley should triggers and trigger warnings are than both mental-health professionals not be equating them. complex, nuanced, and subjective. As and people with mental illness them- Importantly, the core of Harley’s a writer who has struggled mightily selves. In her essay, she dispenses the essay is an argument that’s relevant only with the highly subjective questions amateur medical advice that “in fact to academia, where requests for trigger of how much plot it’s okay to describe we should choose to react to our neg- warnings can actually be enforced by without including a spoiler alert or ative experiences with reason, logic, college or university policy. That’s not whether there’s a statute of limitations and evidence-based inquiry.” I am, in a trivial concern—far from it. But aca- and when it kicks in (should I include fact, choosing to react to the nega- demia is only one arena where debates a spoiler alert for Citizen Kane? Star tive experience of my trauma-related about trigger warnings and content Wars? Mad Men?), I can tell you that depression with reason, logic, and evi- notes are happening. These debates this assertion is just flat out wrong. dence-based inquiry—and this includes also focus on commercial publishing And I did not, in fact, say that trigger the evidence-based provisional conclu- (such as newspapers and magazines) warnings were only for PTSD suffer- sion, informed by (among other things) and online platforms (such as blogs and ers—in fact, I specifically said otherwise conversations with my therapist and YouTube videos), where the only pres- (“While people with PTSD are the pri- my psychiatrist, that at times when sure applied is that by the consumer: mary reason for content notes, they’re my mental health is shaky, it’s a bad

46 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org idea for me to read about misogynist for trigger warnings but it’s not okay place, but I am not convinced that they hatred and harassment. And Harley for me to say the same about opposing are needed for the audience of Free even seems to dismiss the very exis- them? Inquiry.” tence of people who are triggered by I understand that it’s hard to hear Yes, trigger warnings are imper- traumatic content, describing them as people say, “This thing you’re doing is fect. They are vague and blunt instru- readers “only believed to be out there hurting me, and if you keep doing it ments—assuming that “vague” and somewhere”—as opposed to actual I’m going to make some pretty harsh “blunt instrument” means “not all trig- people who are speaking out. assumptions about you.” But if we gers can be predicted or avoided.” They What’s more, her reading of my want to be good people, we need are not a panacea. But they have their own experience with depression is so to be willing to hear that and take it place, especially when writers don’t off-base, so exactly the opposite of seriously—even if we don’t ultimately know their audience. I don’t know what I actually wrote, it’s hard to be accept their judgments. If you think whether they’re needed for the audi- charitable and assume the misreading someone is incorrect about A implying ence of Free Inquiry—so since I don’t wasn’t deliberate. When describing my B, make that case. Don’t excoriate peo- know who those readers are, I thought experience of depression, Harley says ple simply for asserting that ideas have it was reasonable to err on the side of that “she herself manages to weed implications. caution and add a twelve-word intro- out disturbing material without need- duction to my piece that might prevent ing someone else to play patriarch (or some needless pain. God) and slap a canned trigger warn- That’s pretty much exactly what I ing on it. She can do this because when said. she is evaluating material, even when It seems as if Harley wanted to write angered or hurt, she is thinking ratio- an essay about what she sees as the nally instead of engaging in the emo- overreach and misuse of trigger warn- tionalism that pervades her op-ed.” ings in academia and used my column That’s not only needlessly snide—it “There are serious problems as an excuse. I wish she had simply writ- completely misses the point. The whole with both the accuracy and the ten the essay. I would like to see a idea was that trigger warnings help justice of Harley’s essay, and I’m good, thoughtful critique of trigger me make choices about what I want to warnings by someone who under- read and when, and they help me avoid going to talk about them.” stands that they’re valuable but is con- some triggering content that can lead cerned about how they’re sometimes to a depression spiral. The whole point used. As it was, Harley unfairly shoe- was that when I’m weeding out dis- horned her essay into a response to my turbing material, trigger warnings help. column, misrepresenting my views and And it’s absurd to argue that point- distorting important parts of the truth ing out the implications of an idea in order to make her case. And this or a behavior constitutes “false equiv- makes me seriously mistrust whether alence,” “poisoning the well,” “emo- Finally, it is wildly frustrating to read the case she did make was accurate or tional blackmail,” or “telling others a 3,600-plus word essay responding to fair. what they are actually saying.” Pointing something you’ve written—an essay out the implications of an idea or a that misrepresents what you’ve said behavior—such as the implications of and equates you with the warriors of pseudoscience or religious belief—is the War on Christmas—and then, in key to freethought. And pointing out the final paragraph, discover that she that those implications are harmful is actually agrees with you. To quote Greta Christina is the author of Comforting key to moral persuasion. This accusa- Harley: “Trigger warnings can at best Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing tion is especially bizarre because Harley be vague and general and confined to Do with God, Coming Out Atheist: How does this herself—when she claims to specific circumstances—they are a to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, that I “unintentionally celebrated” a blunt instrument. Certainly, I employed Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things whole panoply of “irrational behavior,” one when I prefaced a fanfic chapter That Piss Off the Godless, and Bending: including superstition, science denial, with the statement that it involved Dirty, Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, and the belief in the war on Christmas. rape, because I did not know who my Religion, Unicorns, and More. Why is it okay for her to say that there online and anonymous audience mem- are negative implications to advocating bers were. Trigger warnings have their

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 47 Ed Buckner and Mandisa Thomas Should Atheist and Humanist Organizations Broaden Their Purpose? cont. from p. 45 not been embraced because of the this comes to light. It is important to Ed Buckner is coauthor of In Freedom We Trust: color of their skins or some other super- the survival of our movement to man- An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty (2012), ficial or irrelevant characteristic but as age our groups and ourselves to ensure a former president of American Atheists, and powerful people well worth listening that we have the best representation a former executive director of the Council for to and following. possible and to show that we care. Secular Humanism. He was an advisor for Dale We know that some racist, sexist, Most of us—as individuals and orga- McGowan’s Atheism for Dummies (2013) and a antigay, non-caring humanists and nizations—really do care. And we’re contributor to The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief atheists exist, and we surmise that not just saying it; we’re acting on it, (2007). Mandisa Thomas is the founder and there are leaders and other prominent effectively. president of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. She serves persons within the community who for the boards for Foundation Beyond Belief, harbor views that are not consistent From the authors: This essay is a slightly Reason Rally 2016, and the Secular Coalition for with the core values of progressivism. revised version of one we posted on the America. Her media appearances include CBS However, we do our best to identify, NoGodBlog in October 2015. We’re grate Sunday Morning, CNN.com, and JET magazine. thoroughly examine, and resolve when ful to Free Inquiry for giving it fresh readers.

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48 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org Doerr's Way

Public Education under Siege, Part 2 Edd Doerr

ike comedian Rodney Dangerfield, percent of respondents to the annual kids in America, a quarter of whom live teachers “don’t get no respect.” Gallup education polls have given the in poverty and half of whom qualify for LThey and their unions have been public schools nationally an A or B free or reduced-price school lunches: getting sniped at for years by the rating, though 70 percent would give more adequate and more equitably likes of Secretary of Education Arne an A or B to the public schools they distributed funding; smaller classes; Duncan; now eclipsed, disgraced for- know best—the ones attended by their richer curricula; wraparound social and mer Washington, D.C., school super- oldest kids. And this when we know medical services; less emphasis on test- intendent Michelle Rhee; hordes of that ever so many inner-city schools are ing and evaluating teachers by student conservative pundits with no experi- struggling with obsolete buildings and test results; an end to the diversion ence in classrooms; sectarian special huge percentages of poor, deprived, of public funds to special-interest pri- interests seeking public funding for an and at-risk kids. vate schools through vouchers and tax array of faith-based private schools; What we hear from the reformists credits; and a halt in the expansion of and entrepreneurs salivating at the and pseudo-reformers, few of whom charter schools. chance to cash in on some of the $600 ever actually taught school, is a lot of billion-plus spent annually on public blather about vouchers and tax cred- schools that serve over fifty million its for private schools, which would American K–12 students. fragment our school population along Teachers and their unions are blamed religious and other lines, and about for the real or imagined shortcomings the hyped wonders of charter schools. of our schools. Yes, our schools can and Little is heard about the 2014 Stanford “Like comedian Rodney should be improved, but all we hear University CREDO study, which showed Dangerfield, teachers are criticisms of teachers and proposals that nearly 40 percent of charters are to end teacher tenure and unions and worse than regular public schools, ‘don’t get no respect.’” plans to turn teachers into something while fewer than 20 percent are any like assembly-line robots and students better, generally because charter into an undifferentiated mass of wid- schools get to be more selective. Or gets. These would further discourage of the recent study of charters in the talented people from choosing careers District of Columbia, where over 40 in teaching. Little is ever said about the percent of the kids attend highly rated The new Every Student Succeeds challenges of educating an infinite vari- charters. Nearly 90 percent of the char- Act, making its way through Congress ety of young people from an incredi- ters serve smaller percentages of at-risk as this column is being written in early ble diversity of families, backgrounds, kids than nearby regular public schools. December, is a mix of good and bad. and income levels or about the efforts And this does not even mention the Among its not-so-good features is its expended by overworked teachers and charter-school frauds or flops or gener- retention of the emphasis on testing school staff. ally failing cyber-charters. and its insistence that parents not be Sadly, Americans have generally Too little is heard of what serious, allowed to opt kids out of some test- been taken in by all the negative pro- experienced educators know that we ing, which runs counter to the 2015 paganda. For years, only about 20 need to make our schools better for all Gallup education poll’s findings that

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 49 67 percent of Americans disapprove of school-bus transportation. Wisconsin stakes outcomes onto those without excessive emphasis on testing and, by governor and failed GOP presidential power over it. In general, CCSS is not 47 percent to 40 percent, support the aspirant Scott Walker, ignoring the fact owned and valued by those required opt-out movement. that Milwaukee’s public schools outper- to institute it—current public school In other news on this all-important form its voucher schools, is cutting the teachers and administrators nation- but little-reported front: in October, public-school budget while increasing wide. This alone makes CCSS bound the Center for Inquiry, Americans for voucher school funding by $258 million to fail.” CCSS, “with its dependence on Religious Liberty, and over fifty other for the 2016–2017 school year. The high-stakes testing outcomes to ‘prove’ national organizations belonging Pastors for Texas Children, a pro-pub- that education was occurring—or else,” to the National Coalition for Public lic education group, filed a brief with she writes, was largely pushed by big- Education urged Congress not to reau- the Texas Supreme Court opposing a money entrepreneurs and so-called thorize the U.S.-taxpayer-supported religious Right claim that denying tax “reformers” with little actual connec- District of Columbia school-voucher aid to church schools “threatens reli- tion to teaching. CCSS was never field- plan started by the Bush administration. gious freedom.” (The Texas constitu- tested before being foisted on the tion bans tax aid to sectarian schools.) states by the federal government. This Nevada’s 2015 school-voucher law, now powerful book easily rates five stars. being challenged in state court by the Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion American Civil Liberties Union, is being in an Age of Intolerance, by Linda K. used mainly by upper-income families, Wertheimer (Beacon Press, 2015), is not the poor whom it was ostensibly a respected journalist’s argument for intended to benefit. Arizona’s school- more teaching “about” religion in pub- “Too little is heard of what voucher plan mainly aids the affluent lic schools as, among other things, an serious, experienced educators and has shown no improvement for antidote for intolerance. It is based know that we need to make the public schools. The Arkansas-based largely on her investigations in half a billionaire Waltons, of WalMart fame, dozen communities. Her intentions are our schools better for all kids in failed in their 2015 effort to charterize/ good, but she does not highlight the America. . . .” voucherize their state’s public schools. difficulties. Few teachers are trained or qualified to teach properly about New Books on Education religion. The topic is a controversial The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s hot potato for teachers and schools. Schools, by Dale Russakoff (Houghton There are few if any appropriate texts Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), is a veteran for public-school use. The curriculum in journalist’s well-researched study of social studies is already overcrowded. GOP representatives pushed it through the efforts to salvage Newark’s pov- Blame Game, by Steven P. Jones (IAP, anyway, though it is not expected to erty-ravaged public-school system. It 2015), is a weak, oddly timid effort to reach President Barack Obama’s desk. would have been even better if the deal with the subject I explored much Hillary Clinton in November came out author had discussed the deleterious more boldly in this column. Jones does for choice “within the public school effects of New Jersey’s having nearly six usefully note, however, that blaming system—not outside of it—because I hundred school districts, which tend to teachers and unions for the real or am still a firm believer that the public separate communities by income and imagined problems of public schools school system is one of the real pillars race. (Comparably sized Maryland has ignores the fact that students’ homes of our democracy.” only twenty-four school districts, which and lives outside school are far more The Washington State Supreme makes a big difference.) influential than what goes on in class- Court ruled in September that the Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns rooms. state’s charter-school law is uncon- Our Schools? by Mercedes K. Schneider stitutional because charters are not (Teachers College Press, 2015): while a governed by elected school boards. “common core” in K–12 math and read- Edd Doerr is the president of Americans Indiana’s Supreme Court, which upheld ing education sounds like a good idea, for Religious Liberty (arlinc.org) and a for- the state’s Republican school-voucher veteran educator and author Schneider mer president of the American Humanist law even though it conflicts with two shows in this important new book that Association. He is a columnist and senior articles in the state constitution, ruled the Common Core State Standards editor of FREE INQUIRY. in 2015 that the right to a free pub- (CCSS for short) “is a hastily produced lic education does not guarantee free product intended to impose high-

50 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org Great Minds

H. L. Mencken: Scourge of the Booboisie Dale DeBakcsy

t the sputtering end of the Gilded as the lost old man we see in Inherit to take its bearings. There is no way to Age, a cult of sham gentility had the Wind and of Dayton as the land mistake a Mencken linguistic assault A America in a creative vise. Our of orchestrated religious convulsions. for anything but Mencken: “That literature was Victorian but without Even when Mencken was wrong—and Protestantism in this great Christian the smoldering subtext of radicalism he was often wrong—the force of his realm is down with a wasting disease of its British antecedents, while pro challenges, the refusal to take things as must be obvious to every amateur of priety was the watchword of govern- they appeared, positively complexified ghostly pathology. One half of it is mental censors who determined what the landscape of an American discourse moving, with slowly accelerating speed, the American public was and was not grown timid under sedition laws and in the direction of the Harlot of the allowed to read. It was the era of the federal surveillance. Seven Hills: the other is sliding down Comstock laws, which decreed it ille- Personally, he was a blustering con- into voodooism. The former carries the gal for anybody to instruct a woman tradiction in the best American tradi- greater part of Protestant money with on how her own body worked; the tion. Mencken lived with his mother resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan; and until her death, keeping an orderly the tightening of New Puritanism’s and quite mad work schedule that was grasp around the throat of innocuous thoroughly at odds with his carefully “. . . H. L. Mencken . . . fought American revelry. But more than any crafted sinful old devil persona. He against America’s bland easing of that, it was the age of H. L. Mencken never attended college, opting instead into respectable Babbittry with (1880–1956), the paradoxical cynic to hop straight into the newspaper who fought against America’s bland business upon the death of his father, a fierce elegance that founded easing into respectable Babbittry with and yet his meticulous work cata- modern editorial writing.” a fierce elegance that founded mod- loguing the vagaries and diversity of ern editorial writing. American English was the ship that From the pages of The Smart Set and launched a thousand comparative lin- American Mercury, the culture-defin- guistics departments. He was a cultural ing magazines that he edited, and The commentator who helped usher in a it; the latter carries the greater part Baltimore Evening Sun, to which he con- new era of American thought, and then of Protestant libido.” Mencken’s sen- tributed for more than three decades, he arbitrarily dug in his heels against tences are gilded dance halls in which Mencken devoted himself to a tireless any further progress once he saw his elegant ladies and gaudy street women struggle against ignorance and charla- goals achieved. A skeptical libertarian jostle against one another in improba- tanry. He shook American literature by avant le mot, he ended his days being ble but delicious concord. In the hands the shoulders until it dropped its gen- rejected by both liberal and conserva- of a lesser stylist, it could easily devolve teel affectations in favor of a hardscrab- tive alike, too scornful of socialism to fit into the stuff of faux-risqué Rotarian ble look at the cost of American success. in with the former and too withering toastmanship, but Mencken’s exhaus- The realism of Theodore Dreiser and in his condemnation of Christianity’s tive immersion in the literary traditions Sinclair Lewis would have come and various inanities to pass muster with of the late nineteenth and twentieth gone largely unnoticed if not for his the latter. centuries made it all hang intoxicatingly vigorous championing of their prose. As an author, his prose was the together. When his foe was worth his And what America knew of Joseph most distinctive and satisfying of his venom, the results were the definitive Conrad, Friedrich Nietzsche, George generation, a tough and gnarled mass statements of their age. Bernard Shaw, and F. Scott Fitzgerald of arcane references and intentionally After an apprenticeship served at the it knew from Mencken. His coverage vulgar Americanisms that mixed the Baltimore Herald, Mencken was given a of the Scopes Monkey Trial set forever surliness of vintage Twain with the clip chance to coedit the failing magazine the image of William Jennings Bryan and jitter of a new age moving too fast The Smart Set with theater critic George

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 51 Jean Nathan. They recast the journal as career, his arrows aimed at the parochi- could not and would not understand a joint attack on the stifling strictures of alism of American culture and politics the innovations of modernism. He American culture’s barren gentility. First rubbed against the grain of prewar abhorred the New Deal as a reckless as a literary critic (1908–1915) and then idealism. After the experience of World experiment in big government that as editor (1915–1923), Mencken lashed War I, however, Americans were at last would end in the destruction of liberty. out at the anemic literature of the ready to see the worst—and Mencken He argued for an isolationist approach Oliver Wendell Holmes tradition and was there, as he had been since the to World War II, retiring in silent pro- sought out authors who were neither turn of the century, to show it to them. test upon America’s engagement in the ashamed of embracing the emerging He savaged politicians and preachers conflict. He continued to rail against American language nor of reporting and those who would be both; railed the old foes of the Gilded Age and the grim casualties of the American against Christian Science and white the Roaring Twenties even though Way. He championed the thick real- supremacists; snarled at Prohibition; their malevolent stars were largely in ism of Theodore Dreiser and thereby and shone a cruel and unforgiving light decline, giving his later editorials a feel- put Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt upon the lie at the heart of every presi- ing of curmudgeonly disconnection. By into the pantheon of American liter- dential promise. the early forties, the nation’s greatest ature. A decade later, he introduced He was a curmudgeon soothed essayist found himself muzzled and America to Main Street, a novel by a only by memories of Huckleberry Finn straining for purpose. His additions and brilliant drunkard named Sinclair Lewis and the music of the great Romantic revisions to The American Language, that would go on to win America’s first composers. Mencken seemed to hate the massive study of American English’s Nobel Prize for Literature. everything, and America loved him for departure from British English, was it. At the height, of his influence in perennially successful, and a series of the mid-twenties, his Sun columns and memoirs proved engaging and pop- American Mercury editorials set the ular, but the idea of Mencken as the pace for advanced skepticism in the head man of the nation’s intellectual United States, culminating in his mas- reimagining grew less thinkable with terful coverage of the Scopes Monkey each Franklin Delano Roosevelt reelec- “He was a cultural commentator Trial of 1925. Though he had to miss the tion, leaving Mencken to seethe pri- who helped usher in a new era legendary denouement when Clarence vately and writing unpublished works of American thought, and then Darrow put William Jennings Bryan on for a future he hoped would under- the stand, his reports of religious life stand him better. he arbitrarily dug in his heels in Dayton, Tennessee, and especially In many ways, it has. The mixture of against any further progress his obituary of Bryan, who died shortly religious skepticism and extreme liber- once he saw his after the trial, formed the public mem- tarianism that formed the core of his ory of the event. We remember Dayton personal ideology, and which was so goals achieved.” as a mixture of earnest religious fanat- problematic for his time, is a cultural ics and unscrupulous business oppor- commonplace now. Turn on any epi- tunists because that is what Mencken sode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit, and showed us, just as he bequeathed us you’ll see the spirit of Mencken in all our picture of Bryan as a glory-seeking of its paradox alive and well. And after charlatan whose certainty exceeded his years of assurances that American reli- But as revolutionary and import- understanding. Though Scopes lost the gion was steadily rationalizing itself in ant a literary critic as he was, it is as a trial, the victory belonged to evolution step with the times, the resurgence of social commentator that we remember thanks to Mencken’s journalism. fundamentalism has resolutely flung Mencken now, a role he was able to atheism back upon its copies of The play once he slipped the purely liter- o long as America was fat and pros- Mencken Chrestomathy in search of ary bonds of The Smart Set and set Sperous, Mencken was the necessary explanations for this presumed-mori- out to create a new magazine in his court cynic, the indispensable conveyor bund specter. own image, the American Mercury of Puritanism’s ongoing, manifest, and The man who scratched and fought (1924–1933). It was the magazine that manifold cruelties. But come the Stock nearly alone against the timid self-sat- defined “it-ness” during the height of Market Crash of 1929, his feel for the isfaction, casual racism, anti-intel- the Roaring Twenties, for no other rea- leading edge of critical analysis grew lectualism, and insincere prudery of son than that here Mencken was free less sure and continued growing more pre–World War America would find to be Mencken, to lash out at what- vague with each year. The man who many of his bugbears, thought long ever he thought needed a thorough had argued for America to break free defeated by the modernists who dis- humbling. When he began his writing of its creative thralldom to Victorianism carded him as old-fashioned, thriving

52 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org with renewed vigor today. The vac- fare programs), but there is also uous sentimentality of Twitter, the much that will stay eternally relevant Dale DeBakcsy is the author of Godless flaccid intellectual barbarism of Rick whenever, after a long abeyance, the Nerdistry: How to Be a Bag of Chemicals Santorum, the ghastly intolerance of “anthropoid booboisie” links arms with and Still Have Fun and Illustrated Women the Westboro Baptists—these would all the undulating purveyors of redemp- in Science: Year One (both published by have Mencken scrambling with wicked tion to attempt another pull on the Gentlemen Scholars, respectively 2014 glee toward his Corona typewriter to brake line of American ethical progress. and 2015). He is a frequent contributor point out the price of flagging critical to Free Inquiry and also writes regu- diligence and easy bourgeois prosper- In times such as these, Mencken will larly for Philosophy Now, American Atheist ity. There is much in him that is best left always be our gruff oracle, the Delphi Magazine, and Skeptical Inquirer. dead (his low-burning anti-Semitism, of Baltimore, mocking and relentless, his often-cold opposition to social-wel- and most of all necessary.

Great Minds Excerpt

In Memoriam: W.J.B. H. L. Mencken

as it been duly marked by histori- iat, transiently flustered by him in 1896, death found him there. The man felt ans that William Jennings Bryan’s quickly penetrated his buncombe and at home in such simple and Christian Hlast secular act on this globe of sin would have no more of him; the cockney scenes. He liked people who sweated was to catch flies? A curious detail, and gallery jeered him at every Democratic freely, and were not debauched by the not without its sardonic overtones. He national convention for twenty-five was the most sedulous fly-catcher in years. But out where the grass grows American history, and in many ways the high, and the horned cattle dream away most successful. His quarry, of course, was the lazy afternoons, and men still fear the not Musca domestica but Homo neander powers and principalities of the air—out talensis. For forty years he tracked it with there between the corn-rows he held his “[Bryan] liked people who coo and bellow, up and down the rustic old puissance to the end. There was no sweated freely, and were backways of the Republic. Wherever the need of beaters to drive in his game. The flambeaux of Chautauqua smoked and news that he was coming was enough. not debauched by the guttered, and the bilge of idealism ran in For miles the flivver dust would choke the refinements of the toilet.” the veins, and Baptist pastors dammed roads. And when he rose at the end of the brooks with the sanctified, and men the day to discharge his Message there gathered who were weary and heavy would be such breathless attention, laden, and their wives who were full of such a rapt and enchanted ecstasy, such Peruna and as fecund as the shad (Alosa a sweet rustle of amens as the world refinements of the toilet. Making his sapidissima), there the indefatigable had not known since Johann fell to progress up and down the Main street Jennings set up his traps and spread his Herod’s ax. of little Dayton, surrounded by gaping bait. He knew every country town in the There was something peculiarly fit- primates from the upland valleys of the South and West, and he could crowd the ting in the fact that his last days were Cumberland Range, his coat laid aside, most remote of them to suffocation by spent in a one-horse Tennessee village, his bare arms and hairy chest shining simply winding his horn. The city proletar- beating off the flies and gnats, and that damply, his bald head sprinkled with

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 53 dust—so accoutered and on display, he His place in Tennessee hagiography is that he had been received in civilized was obviously happy. He liked getting secure. If the village barber saved any societies, that he had been a high offi- up early in the morning, to the tune of his hair, then it is curing gall-stones cer of state. He seemed only a poor of cocks crowing on the dunghill. He down there today. clod like those around him, deluded by liked the heavy, greasy victuals of the But what label will he bear in more a childish theology, full of an almost farmhouse kitchen. He liked country urbane regions? One, I fear, of a far less pathological hatred of all learning, all lawyers, country pastors, all country flattering kind. Bryan lived too long, human dignity, all beauty, all fine and people. He liked country sounds and and descended too deeply into the noble things. He was a peasant come country smells. mud, to be taken seriously hereafter home to the barnyard. Imagine a gen- by fully literate men, even of the kind tleman, and you have imagined every- who write schoolbooks. There was a thing that he was not. What animated scattering of sweet words in his funeral him from end to end of his grotesque notices, but it was no more than a career was simply ambition—the ambi- response to conventional sentimental- tion of a common man to get his hand ity. The best verdict the most roman- upon the collar of his superiors, or, “If the fellow [Bryan] was tic editorial writer could dredge up, failing that, to get his thumb into their save in the humorless South, was to eyes. He was born with a roaring voice, sincere, then so was P. T. the general effect that his imbecilities and it had the trick of inflaming half- Barnum.… Imagine a were excused by his earnestness—that wits. His whole career was devoted gentleman, and you have under his clowning, as under that of to raising those half-wits against their the juggler of Notre Dame, there was betters, that he himself might shine. imagined everything that the zeal of a steadfast soul. But this His last battle will be grossly misun- he was not.” was apology, not praise; precisely the derstood if it is thought of as a mere same thing might be said of Mary Baker exercise in fanaticism—that is, if Bryan G. Eddy. The truth is that even Bryan’s the Fundamentalist Pope is mistaken sincerity will probably yield to what is for one of the bucolic Fundamentalists. called, in other fields, definitive criti- There was much more in it than that, as cism. Was he sincere when he opposed everyone knows who saw him on the I believe that his liking was sincere— imperialism in the Philippines, or when field. What moved him, at bottom, was perhaps the only sincere thing in the he fed it with deserving Democrats in simply hatred of the city men who had man. His nose showed no uneasiness Santo Domingo? Was he sincere when laughed at him so long, and brought when a hillman in faded overalls and he tried to shove Prohibitionists under him at last to so tatterdemalion an hickory shirt accosted him on the street, the table, or when he seized their estate. He lusted for revenge upon and besought him for light upon some banner and began to lead them with them. He yearned to lead the anthro- mystery of Holy Writ. The simian gab- loud whoops? Was he sincere when poid rabble against them, to punish ble of the cross-roads was not gabble he bellowed against war, or when he them for their execution upon him by to him, but wisdom of an occult and dreamed of himself as a tin-soldier attacking the very vitals of their civiliza- superior sort. In the presence of city in uniform, with a grave reserved at tion. He went far beyond the bounds of folks he was palpably uneasy. Their Arlington among the generals? Was he any merely religious frenzy, however clothes, I suspect, annoyed him, and sincere when he fawned over Champ inordinate. When he began denouncing he was suspicious of their too delicate Clark, or when he betrayed Clark? Was the notion that man is a mammal even manners. He knew all the while that he sincere when he pleaded for toler- some of the hinds at Dayton were agape. they were laughing at him—if not at ance in New York, or when he bawled And when, brought upon Clarence his baroque theology, then at least at for the faggot and stake in Tennessee? Darrow’s cruel hook, he writhed and his alpaca pantaloons. But the yokels This talk of sincerity, I confess, tossed in a very fury of malignancy, bawl- never laughed at him. To them he was fatigues me. If the fellow was sincere, ing against the veriest elements of sense not the huntsman but the prophet, and then so was P. T. Barnum. The word is and decency like a man frantic—when he toward the end, as he gradually for- disgraced and degraded by such uses. came to that tragic climax of his striving sook mundane politics for more ghostly He was, in fact, a charlatan, a mounte- there were snickers among the hinds as concerns, they began to elevate him in bank, a zany without sense or dignity. well as hosannas. . . . their hierarchy. When he died he was His career brought him into contact the peer of Abraham. His old enemy, with the first men of his time; he pre- The full essay was originally published Wilson, aspiring to the same white ferred the company of rustic ignora- in the Baltimore Evening Sun on July and shining robe, came down with muses. It was hard to believe, watching 27, 1925, and revised for The Mencken a thump. But Bryan made the grade. him at Dayton, that he had traveled, Chrestomathy (Vintage, 1982).

54 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org High Heresy

Trojan Horde Robert M. Price

have read two books that turned out ness? Would Europeans throw open Islam to be hate speech and deserving to be truly prophetic. Not clairvoyant, their doors, welcoming the destruction of prosecution. Maybe that’s what it Imind you, just prescient. The authors of their culture with the famous last will take for my politically correct athe- were like Isaac Asimov’s futurologist words, “Give me your tired, your poor ist buddies to see what’s at stake. There Hari Seldon in his Foundation epic: . . . . The wretched refuse of your teem- will only be more of this pernicious they had a far-reaching grasp of how ing shore”? You know they would. And nonsense the greater the proportion of present trends would turn out. One of now, in 2015, they have. inassimilable Muslims that are brought these books was Andrei Amalric’s Will in. Of course, many Muslim immigrants the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? o one can question the motives of It was published in English in 1970 Nrefugees from embattled Syria and and foresaw then that the USSR must other blasted zones of famine and pes- unravel because of irreconcilable eth- tilence. They would be fools not to seek nic tensions between the disparate a better life elsewhere, namely else- Soviet “republics.” Okay, Amalric was here (for they come a-knocking at our Jean Raspail’s novel The just a few years early. chamber door, too). But one must not Camp of the Saints was not The other book was Jean Raspail’s ignore the foreseeable consequences novel The Camp of the Saints (English (Raspail, after all, foresaw them). In clairvoyant, but in 2015 it sure publication in 1975), whose title comes effect, if not intent, what we are wit- seems prophetic. from Revelation 20:7–9: “And when nessing is a colonization of the Jewish- the thousand years are ended, Satan Christian-secular West by the Islamic will be loosed from his prison and will juggernaut. You may think me para- come out to deceive the nations which noid and racist, but I am neither. Such are at the four corners of the earth, that knee-jerk reactions are only expres- do assimilate, but many do not—wit- is, Gog and Magog, to gather them for sions (and tools) of the self-righteous ness the troublesome Muslim enclaves battle; their number is like the sand of self-hatred that leaves the beleaguered in Dearborn and Minneapolis-St. Paul. the sea. And they marched up over the West welcoming its own demise. But what is a tenderhearted Euro broad earth and surrounded the camp We can already see the advance of pean/American to do in the face of of the saints and the beloved city.” It Finlandization (“Russia gets a cold and Muslim legions demanding entry? It had suddenly occurred to the author Finland sneezes”), a kind of Stockholm is a “tough choice” such as politicians one day as he relaxed at the beach: syndrome, whereby we are so fear- always jabber about but never seem What if the inexhaustible hordes of the ful of accusations of “Islamophobia” willing to make. But Garrett Hardin scarecrow poor from all over the Third that we whitewash militant Islam and was willing to make it. In his famous World were to show up on the shores make accommodations to Muslims that essay (titled more aptly than he could of affluent Europe? Would the survivor we would never make to Christians. know!), “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case guilt of the liberal West sap any and all Canada is at this very moment con- against Helping the Poor” (Psychology resistance to the invading army whose sidering the adoption of blasphemy Today, September 1974), he dared to only weapon was its terrible needi- laws that would declare any criticism of face the terrible question of whether

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 55 the affluent West ought to keep com- all. What this amounts to is a mirror embody a serious threat to Western ing to the rescue of famine-stricken image of Islamo-fascist zealotry: the civilization, take a long look at Western Third-World nations. Leave aside the overruling of real-world considerations Europe and the cultural compromises vital fact that no such famines have in favor of inflexible dogma. What I it has already made. Europe is already ever occurred in democratic nations, am saying is that such sweet Christian morphing into Eurabia. Sweden is only under dictatorial regimes such as “political snake-handling” plays right the prime case of cultural suicide and those of Albania, Ethiopia, and North into the violent hands of those who self-hatred. France welcomed an influx Korea, implying that the famines were will sooner or later take advantage of North African Muslims years ago just preventable and caused by rapacious of it. But Joachim Kahl (The Misery of to have worker bees to do their dirty misappropriation of resources (and of Christianity, 1971) was right: What do work. The shrinking French population international famine relief!). Suppose you expect from a religion whose moral will bequeath its once-great civilization the famines are due to the populations epitome is a man surrendering himself to those indifferent to it or contemptu- exceeding the carrying capacity of their to death? “What, after all, is the cross of ous of it. Wait and see the bonfire of lands. If the West rushes in to provide Jesus Christ? It is nothing but the sum the vanities when the heirs of France the food, are we not only sowing the total of a sadomasochistic glorification turn the Louvre into a mosque. I hope I seeds of another, even worse, famine in of pain.” Does not Harvard theologian don’t live to see it. the next generation? If the population Gordon D. Kaufman say much the same To bring the issue to a point: we thing? “In the cross were found meek- must decide whether quantity matters ness and submission, nonresistance to more than quality, whether the mainte- evil, self-sacrifice: and the resurrection nance of Western Enlightenment val- meant that just this cross was the very ues is worth sacrificing human lives, revelation of God’s inmost nature” (in whether ours or others. Most of us have his Systematic Theology: A Historicist no difficulty deciding when it is a ques- “What is more heartless: Perspective). tion of standing up against armed to sit by and mourn at tragedy But it’s even worse than that, I’m invaders. But I suggest the issue is no afraid. Hardin bids us picture a lifeboat different when the invaders are desper- now or to contribute to a worse in a pitching sea, filled to capacity while ate seekers of a too-costly mercy. It is disaster down the line?” many others are swimming and sinking analogous to a mass of plague-bearers in the surrounding waters. You see at the door. They’re already doomed; swimmers approaching and demand- will it help them if we join their num- ing to be taken aboard, but there is no ber? I for one do not fancy playing the room! What do you do? Your fellow role of the bleeding heart Father soaked and sodden passengers start Panelou in Camus’s The Plague (another beating them away with their oars. prophetic novel), who so sympathized But your conscience urges you to jump with the plague sufferers to whom he is already disastrously huge, you know overboard to make room for one more. ministered that he felt guilty not being what is going to happen if we pump it Never mind that your replacement is one of them and then psychosomati- up further via foreign aid. What is more likely to lack your tenderheartedness. cally induced the symptoms and suc- heartless: to sit by and mourn at trag- You will simply have extinguished the cumbed to them. edy now or to contribute to a worse last ember of conscience in the boat, disaster down the line? The dilemma is and from there on in, it’s Lord of the This essay was reprinted with permission not doing the right thing versus refus- Flies. Congratulations. from Robert M. Price’s blog Zarathustra ing to do the right thing but rather of The same issue arises when we con- Speaks. salving our consciences in the short run sider the naïve absurdity of pacifism. at the price of causing even greater You’re too pure to bloody your hands tragedy in the long (and, at that, not fighting Nazis? You’re only aiding their too long) run. Alas, sentiment masquer- efforts, you fool! What a moral accom- Robert M. Price, a longtime friend and ades as morality. plishment. sometime employee of the Center for Of course, as witness the vacuous But the rising tide of Muslim ref- Inquiry, is the host of The Bible Geek platitudes of Pope Francis, Christian ugees from a region already ablaze podcast and the author of many books, compassion is a case—perhaps the with sectarian violence and insanity is including The Christ Myth Theory and Its case—of sentiment masked as moral- not quite like that. The vast majority of Problems, Moses and Minimalism, and ity. Heedless of the foreseeable results, refugees harbor no murderous aims. Of Blaming Jesus for Jehovah. Christians urge unqualified mercy to course not. But if you don’t think they

56 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 57 The Humanist Soapbox

Religion: Private Matter or Public Policy? Steve Davidson

air-raising media images and sto- and others due to a delusion.” But The problem comes in when people ries of nth-degree violence in the there is no way mental-health officials decide that these rules they have arrived Hname of religion raise the ques- are going to go to the Middle East (or at don’t just apply to them but to every- tion: Are these people mentally ill? anywhere else) with clipboards and one else as well. And then they decide Common sense suggests the answer mental-status exams and start hospi- that they will enforce the rules with vio- is “Yes.” But a thorough search of the talizing everyone who is violent on the diagnostic manual of mental disorders basis of vast systems of unverifiable shows that the manual is vague in beliefs. It would take a hospital the size supplying a definitive, official deter- of the lost continent of Atlantis and mination. more drugs than could be supplied by “Personality Disorder/Explosive even the most ambitious and well-or- “. . . There is no way Type” has possibilities. “Undersocialized ganized street cartel. And then the mental-health officials are going Conduct Disturbance/Aggressive Type” United Nations would complain. to go to the Middle East . . . and beckons. “Dissociative Hysteria” seems None of that is necessary, though. to ring bells. “Fanatic Personality” or The issue can be massively simplified. start hospitalizing everyone who “Personality Disorder/Paranoid Type” Here’s the thing. A lot of people is violent on the basis of vast would seem to be in the ballpark. Then draw tremendous solace from belief systems of unverifiable beliefs.” of course there are the old standbys: systems that are, well, tenuously teth- “delusions of grandeur” and “megalo- ered to tangible reality. There’s usually mania.” a core book that adherents turn to in But, perhaps surprisingly, there is no times of trouble. It’s full of stories and actual diagnosis of “religious extrem- poems, reminders and aphorisms. It lence, perhaps with extreme violence! ism/aggressive type,” defined as some- offers a lot of guidance to living, and Needless to say, now there’s trouble. thing similar to “devotion to a system it’s beautifully written. There are often Now there’s violent social and political of beliefs for which there is no credi- group meetings with some kind of conflict—and it’s going on all over the ble evidence, accompanied by violence authorized leader that allow people to world—because a line has been crossed visited upon anyone who questions share problems, hear words of advice, between pure faith, solace, and mutual or does not abide by that system of gain encouragement, and generally acceptance on one side and totalitarian beliefs, supported by a presumption draw support from the fellowship. The social control on the other. A line has of superiority and consequent entitle- formal meetings are usually held in been crossed between personal belief ment, which results in a toxic loss of gorgeous, imposing buildings that the and political extremism. These conflicts empathy.” adherents have paid for themselves, always come down to beliefs that don’t Now under normal circumstances, frequently with great difficulty. They have a concrete referent, that can’t be a judge doesn’t have too much diffi- may have their own special rules— proven. It’s like the eternal conflicts culty in hospitalizing someone who, for clothes they wear, things they partic- over which is better—Chevy or Ford? example, empties an office building at ularly say and don’t say/do and don’t The Red Sox or the Yankees? There gunpoint while screaming “There are do, and special times of rest. Religious are no disagreements more passionate devils in the elevator.” Such a person involvement such as this makes people than the ones that rest, ultimately, on would be considered a “danger to self feel good. Who’s to complain? personal preferences.

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 57 So what is the public, caught in the approach for the public, in addition to and rationality—rather than on prem- middle of all this, to do? How is the the rule above, is to pursue the social ises that favor special groups on the public—which to some extent doesn’t and economic root of the matter. Ask basis of beliefs that have no concrete care either way—to resolve all this? whether these people are hurting in referent. (4) The public, in addition, Here is one way. Adopt the following some way. Do they have some kind of with a compassionate, analytic touch rule: If a person merely wants to pursue case? Should they be listened to and might want to make an effort to pene- a personal religious belief and it doesn’t their situation assessed? And ultimate- trate to the source of the extremism hurt anyone, the person is free to do so ly—do they need help? Social problems and see if the people with violently and no one has the right to interfere. often underlie religious extremism; it held religious beliefs are in need of Purely personal belief is okay. However, often is a last, desperate resort of the some kind of understanding and assis- if a person wants to cross the line over lonely and lost, the poor and ignored. tance, whereby they can transition into extremism and impose religious So, all this gives the public a way to toward a more calm, mutually benefi- beliefs on other people as a matter structure this worldwide issue: (1) cial, prosperous, and healthful way of of public policy, that person doesn’t Religious extremism may be a form of living. have that right and certainly doesn’t mental illness, even if it doesn’t have a have the right to violently impose those perfectly fitting diagnostic label, and beliefs. Extremism is not okay. that reasonable possibility ought to Steve Davidson, PhD, is a psychologist Above and beyond all this, in reli- give everyone pause. (2) Passion and practicing in Newport Beach, California. He gious extremism as well as in hospitaliz- drama in beliefs don’t make those has initiated continuing education programs, ing violent, delusional people, the real- beliefs either true or practical. (3) As a taught at the university level, and helped ity is that such people are often desper- general rule, the public might want to establish the San Bernadino Mental Health ate for validation, support, respect, and, base public policy on manifestly fair Court. often, money to live on. So, another and useful principles—say, social justice

58 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org Living Without Religion

Sympathy for the Devil-Believers Stephanie Savage

ccording to a 2014 Pew survey, with no patience for the go-along-to- Supreme Court—that allowed “volun- more than half of the American get-along approach of many so-called tary silent prayer” in public schools. Apublic wouldn’t vote for a presi- secular Jews. We never observed the But it was most certainly not silent or dential candidate who didn’t believe Jewish holidays. We exchanged pres- voluntary. Every day before lunch, the in God. In a list of negative traits, athe- ents on Christmas but didn’t actually teacher would have us recite, “Thank ism ranked the highest, a full twenty celebrate it. Why shouldn’t we be able you, Lord, for our daily bread. God is points above infidelity. Sure, it’s okay to exchange gifts just because we great and God is good, and we thank if you’ve cheated on your spouse, as weren’t believers? him for our food. Amen.” I wondered long as you think you might go to hell The closest I came to religion was what God had to do with that pucklike for it. after my mother married a Unitarian roll they handed out in the cafeteria In 2015, the secularist blogosphere Universalist, which is basically organized and why I should be thanking him for was set ablaze by a Gallup poll showing agnosticism. My favorite Unitarian the gelatinous Salisbury steak. It didn’t that 54 percent of the electorate would Sunday school was glorified day-care. seem a very good example of God’s vote for an atheistic president. Finally, We did fun stuff such as carving wooden goodness to me. But I was terrified that slightly more than half of voters would boats and fossil hunting, which I loved the other kids would see I wasn’t pray- vote for an atheist. Only 46 percent because I wanted to be a paleontologist ing, so I mouthed the words. The next more to go! when I grew up. I still have the tiny shells year there was Bible reading in class. I Indeed, in my own life, I’ve expe- I collected during our “expedition.” prayed, so to speak, that I wouldn’t be rienced prejudice due to my atheism. When we moved to Birmingham, called on to participate. During dinner on a second date, I men- Alabama—the buckle of the Bible tioned in passing that I was an atheist. Belt—the Sunday school at our new “How can you be moral without God?” Unitarian Church was a humanist sim- my companion asked me in all earnest- ulacrum of Christian Sunday school. “‘How can you be moral without ness. I’ve often thought I should’ve Snooze! But being a Unitarian had its God?’ my companion asked me answered, “You know, you’re right,” advantages. In the Deep South, peo- in all earnestness. I’ve often and stabbed his hand with my fork. But ple often ask you what church you of course I didn’t, because you don’t belong to. I couldn’t say that I was an thought I should’ve answered, need the fear of God to be moral. Plus, agnostic—or Jewish, for that matter. It ‘You know, you’re right,’ and he was a lot bigger than I was. There was bad enough that I was relentlessly stabbed his hand with my fork.” was no third date. picked on for not being enough of a While prejudice against gays has “Georgia Peach,” which confused me receded at an astonishing rate, accep- because we were in Alabama. With my tance lags for atheists. In a recent NBC/ Yankee accent, I automatically didn’t One afternoon in my early teens, Wall Street Journal poll, 68 percent of fit in, and being a tomboy didn’t help. I realized that I had come to assume respondents said they would vote for a But when I told them I was a Unitarian, that there was no God. In other words, gay presidential candidate. There are a it was their turn to feel perplexed. I had already become an atheist; I just number of reasons for this remarkable They probably thought it was one of hadn’t realized it yet. These were the progress. One is the sheer number of those churches with bizarre rites such days of the Moral Majority, which fur- people in the LGBT community who as handling hungry piranhas instead of ther hardened my attitudes against have come out in recent years. Learning a religion for people who would never believers, especially fundamentalists. that someone you know and care about join a religion. You’re a Unitarian? Oh, My first published work was a satire of is gay often softens prejudices. okay. . . . Pat Robertson’s presidential campaign But bias works both ways. I was At the time, there was a law in in the form of the Twenty-Third Psalm raised agnostic by a Jewish mother Alabama—later overturned by the called “The Psalm of Pat Robertson.”

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 59 It appeared in American Atheist mag- forced to inform my dulcimer friends accepted my article about my coma azine. “Yea, though I walk through about my dire condition. experience, “Covert Cognition: My the halls of Congress, I will fear no Keith received an outpouring of So-Called Near-Death Experience.” It Democrats, for Thou art with me. Thy support and sympathy from them. They was quickly followed by Free Inquiry’s rod and my Chief of Staff will comfort said countless prayers for me. Six weeks acceptance of my essay “Without a me,” read one line. later, I awoke, contrary to my doctors’ Prayer of a Chance,” which was largely predictions, with no cognitive damage about believers’ response to my sup- didn’t have any Christian friends then whatsoever. I was told my recovery posedly miraculous recovery (and Ito counter my prejudice. That all was a miracle so many times—in the about my reaction to their support and changed when I learned to play a tradi- real world and online—that I jokingly prayers). tional Appalachian stringed instrument referred to myself as “Miracle Girl.” Did they abandon me? No. In fact, called a mountain dulcimer. I became As my Christian friends continued to they cheered my success. Most of them active on a popular dulcimer website shower me with support and prayers probably didn’t even know any other with many members from the Deep through the ups and downs of my “out” atheists. But, like my recovery, South. I no longer worried about men- difficult recovery, my attitudes about their acceptance was no miracle. As tioning my Jewish heritage, and cer- Christians slowly changed. I even wel- happened with the gay rights move- tainly no one asked about my religious comed their prayers in the spirit they ment, learning that someone they beliefs. Still, my experience led me to were given. With my completely secular cared about was an atheist forced them gingerly refer to myself as a secular upbringing, this was an alien view, but to incorporate the new information Jew. (Indeed, I was such a secular Jew they truly believed that prayers work. into their previously formed idea of me. that when I was a small child I once To them, prayers were the deepest, I wasn’t some faceless person without pointed to a group of Orthodox Jews most meaningful form of support they the faith they held so dear. And I cer- and said, “What are those funny bean- could offer. tainly wasn’t the kind of flame-throw- ies they’re wearing, Mommy?”) I began to see past the ignorance of ing atheist frequently quoted in the I doubt whether many were fooled fundamentalism to the kindness that press, which is all too often the public by this euphemism, but the subject can lie behind Christianity in people face of atheism. of religion didn’t come up that often. with modern egalitarian mentalities. Exposure to people with differ- Until, that is, I suffered a series of When a 2008 Pew poll showed that 52 ent backgrounds and values tends to strokes on both sides of my brain. I fell percent of American Christians believe broaden perspectives. That, in part, into a deep coma and was on the edge non-Christians can go to Heaven, is what affirmative action is about. of death. My boyfriend, Keith, was many religious leaders begged to dif- The idea that nonbelievers can have fer, claiming those people just weren’t no moral compass without God is aware of Christian doctrine. But I felt ingrained in believers from an early even then that the respondents did age. Only experience can shake such a indeed understand; they simply disre- deeply rooted belief. garded antiquated dogma. The mod- Maybe atheists should steal a card ern mind-set recoils at the idea of God from the gay movement’s deck by com- turning away Albert Einstein because ing out to our religious friends and he was a Jew or Mahatma Gandhi for family. They may never abandon their his Hinduism. dearly held religious beliefs, but they Now that I was becoming more per- might shed their prejudices about athe- sonally acquainted with Christians, that ists. In the process, we may start seeing view only deepened. I slowly revealed them as more than mere holders of my nonbelief to my friends. Okay, I’ll be primitive beliefs. Then we’ll truly be honest: I was afraid they would aban- one nation, with or without God. And don me when they found out about my perhaps we’ll finally see an avowed atheism. It wasn’t exactly hard to read atheist in the Oval Office. between the lines though. When a member became ill or lost a loved one, I always said I would be keeping them in my thoughts, not prayers. Conversely, Stephanie Savage was a fiction writer before when I was diagnosed with a rare auto- a serious illness inspired her to explore immune disease, I didn’t ask for their the skeptical and humanist aspects of prayers. And when, months later, my her experience. She writes a blog, Coma treatments indirectly led to my coma, Chameleon: My Recovery Chronicles, and neither did Keith. is a regular contributor to The Secular But any doubt about my nonbe- Spectrum blog at Patheos. lief ended when Skeptical Inquirer

60 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org The Faith I Left Behind

A Life of Love, Religion, and Science Gordon E. Hunter

t was late afternoon in 1954, on the in coastal Mississippi near Keesler Air dard, except that I sang a love song to first day of my third year of classes at Force Base, where I was stationed Gene Anne as she came down the aisle, IMississippi College (MC), a Southern during the Korean War. She responded and we did not kiss at the end of the Baptist college in Clinton, Mississippi, that “understanding that you need ceremony. Instead, Gene Anne and I near Jackson. I was on the way to the Jesus Christ as your savior is relevant at sang “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us” campus library when I saw her at the any age.” as a duet because the song expressed top of the stairs to the library entrance: Gene Anne took my breath away, what we felt. a new girl on campus. Her beauti- and I proposed that she go with me ful long black hair cascaded over her to an ice cream social that my “dorm ene Anne learned to ice-skate shoulders. My eyes locked with hers, parents” were holding to celebrate the Gduring our three-day honeymoon and when I reached the top of the first day of classes. I may as well have in St. Louis before Maggy took us stairs I said, “You have a beautiful proposed marriage, because we have back to Sparta to celebrate Christmas smile.” She responded, “Thank you.” I been together ever since. We were with Gene Anne’s family and then to opened the heavy door; we entered, married during Christmas vacation Mississippi College where we com- sat across from each other at one of on December 20, 1955, at her home the empty library tables, and became church, First Baptist Church of Sparta, acquainted. Illinois. Gene Anne was from Sparta, a small The morning of the day of the “Our wedding ceremony was town in southern Illinois. She had just wedding, Gene Anne disappeared. I graduated from a two-year Southern couldn’t find her at her house. Ipan- more or less standard, except Baptist college in southwest Missouri icked, jumped into “Maggy,” my aging that . . . Gene Anne and I sang and had come to MC to complete her automobile, and searched without luck ‘Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead bachelor’s degree. She told me that she along the streets between her house had “walked the aisle” to profess Christ and the church where the wedding was Us’ as a duet. . . .” as her savior when she was merely six to take place. I parked and entered the years old. When I marveled at that, church, looking for her in the basement Gene Anne said that her parents had and on the main floor. Frantically, I ran pleted our course requirements. We taken her to the pastor of their church, up the stairs to the balcony, where each graduated with honors in the who asked her why she wanted to I found her in one of the seats with spring of 1956, Gene Anne with honors walk the aisle (coming to the front of her head bowed. “What’s going on?” higher than mine. She was certified to church in response to his invitation I asked. teach English, and I was certified to after his sermon). She answered that “It’s kind of scary getting married,” teach science in public school. she wanted everybody in the church to she said, tears streaming down her We thanked God for the happy know that she accepted Christ as her face, “and I wanted to get as close to events and professional successes that savior and that she would go to heaven God as I could to pray that our mar- followed. First, we spent two years when she died. He was impressed that riage would be a ‘happily ever after’ teaching English and biology in a pub- she knew precisely what she was doing one.” I kissed her, held her close, prayed lic school on the beautiful Pacific island and why she was doing it. with her that our marriage would be of Guam, where I became fascinated I responded that I was twenty-one a happily-ever-after one, and took her by tropical plants and where the first when I walked the aisle to accept home to prepare for the wedding. of our three sons, Morris, was born. Christ in Gulfport First Baptist Church Our ceremony was more or less stan- Then, I spent a year teaching general

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 61 science in Hoopeston, Illinois, where I could be both a Christian and a sci- How Are You, Mother Earth? Despite Mark was born, and I was accepted entist. When challenged by Christian these efforts and the publicity about to a National Science Foundation pro- friends with the question of how I global warming and climate change, gram to work on a master’s degree in could believe in both God and evolu- my Christian friends continued “busi- science at Washington University in tion, I replied, “Evolution is God’s way ness as usual.” St. Louis, Missouri, where Steven was of creating man and all other forms born. I was invited to study for a PhD in of life.” If they persisted, I would point ene Anne was diagnosed with botany at Washington University. After out that the account of God’s creation GAlzheimer’s disease in 2012, and obtaining my doctorate, I accepted my of man in chapter 1 in the Bible differs I resigned all of my church responsi- first job offer, which led to teaching for from the one in chapter 2, and if the bilities to take care of her. I am never four years at Murray State University biblical canon had not been closed far enough away from her that I can’t in Murray, Kentucky. I was given the to new additions hundreds of years hear her call. She spends more time opportunity during my second and ago, we could add evolution as a third in bed than I do, which gives me time third summers at Murray to do post- account. to read, write, and give thought to doctoral research supported by the In the years since my salvation the conflict of being both a Christian National Science Foundation at the experience, I have been regular in and a scientist, which I never did University of Texas. church attendance and support of its before. I was happy being both. One programs. I have accepted leadership morning, I pulled my old anthropol- roles as Sunday-school teacher, song ogy text, Cultural Anthropology, An “. . . When it was discovered . . . leader, and deacon. Nevertheless, Applied Perspective, from the shelf and when it was discovered scientifically opened it to a chapter titled “Functions that Earth was 4.5 billion years that Earth was 4.5 billion years old of Religion.” At the end of a section old and life on Earth had begun and life on Earth had begun 3.5 billion titled “Group Solidarity” was this sum- 3.5 billion years ago, I decided years ago, I decided that infinity came mary: “In short, religion strengthens a before death, not after. Furthermore, person’s sense of group identity and that infinity came before death, it became a stretch for me to believe belonging.” These, indeed, were major not after.” in heaven or hell. I focused more of my factors in my remaining a Christian. The efforts on improving this life. biggest reason though, that I now have Shortly after I began working at taken time to analyze and understand, We then moved to Tennessee TTU, a colleague and I designed a is that becoming a Christian is a highly Technological University (TTU) in Cook biology course to heighten students’ emotional process. The rituals of “walk- eville, Tennessee, where I served as appreciation for the environment ing the aisle” and subsequent baptism chairman of the Biology Department, in which we live and concern about are acts of identification and emotion. and Gene Anne completed a master’s the evermore rapid growth of Earth’s Before walking the aisle, I had no degree in psychology. She became the human population. The course, Man enduring identity, but after that emo- counselor at a local elementary school and His Environment, was approved tional walk and professing Christ as my and director of a government-sup- to meet the freshman requirement for savior, I was a Christian, a child of God, ported public-school program to assist two semesters of science and rapidly and a brother of Jesus. Furthermore, delayed-learning students. For two became the most popular of freshman I was related to every other member years, I was selected as “TTU Professor science courses. Teaching the course of Gulfport First Baptist Church, and of the Year,” and, in 1990, I was given was not enough to satisfy my desire wherever I went I could find Christian the state’s “Tennessee Professor of the for action. I had solar panels put on our brothers and sisters by going to a Year” award. In the spring of 1990, I new home and tried to sell solar panels Baptist church. Never again was I as was selected by the administration of to my neighbors and friends (without lonely as I had been my first several TTU to be the speaker for that year’s success). I bought a hybrid automobile months at Keesler Air Force Base in graduation ceremony, the only instance and distributed tickets to showings of Biloxi, Mississippi. In contrast to emo- during my tenure at TTU that a faculty Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. tional religion, science is rational, bas- member was selected for that honor. Furthermore, I shared my concerns ing truth on evidence. Last, after retirement from TTU in by writing editorials on global warming My quest to become a scientist 1995, I was supported by the National for the local newspaper and comical started when, at Washington University, Science Foundation for five years as a conversations between God and an Dr. Robert Woodson—my major pro- consultant to assist middle Tennessee environmentally concerned prophet fessor—gave me the job of classifying elementary school teachers in develop- for the monthly church newsletter. I the species of a genus of plants living in ing hands-on science teaching plans. taught Sunday-school lessons to adults the tropics of Panama. I did not have to about the greenhouse effect and global go to Panama to collect the plants for f you have taken the time to read warming. I wrote and published a book study. Other scientists for many years Ithis far, you may be wondering how for teens and the young at heart titled had already collected, pressed, dried,

62 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org and glued specimens on standard beliefs are motivated largely by emo- sheets of paper and sent them to the tion, and the biggest motivation is Poem Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium remaining tight with our peers.” When for future scientists to study. I look back on my own experience of When I was certain that I could dis- walking the aisle to declare Christ as An Abandoned tinguish and adequately describe the my savior, I remember that it took me several species of the genus, I wrote a several weeks of watching others per- description of each species in the genus form the ritual before I worked up the Church with a key clarifying the differences. courage to do it myself. Stephen Van Eck Then Dr. Woodson examined my work It takes no courage to become a and approved it for publication. When scientist. It takes a desire to know. For the publisher received my work, he sent me, it was the desire to know how to copies to scientists familiar with related identify external differences in plants he abandoned church stood plant species. Upon receiving positive of different species. Then I wanted to In an open field responses from them, the publisher know what was going on inside living Where lately not a soul had trod. approved publication. The day of that plants that gave them life. Eventually, T publication, based not on belief but on I wanted to know the origin of plants Made of weathered wood, evidence identified by hard work, was and all other things. Now with windows sealed, the day I became accepted as a scientist The curiosity of the tellers of the This portal to the mind of God? by other scientists. It was a significant biblical stories of creation was as great Yet outside these once-cherished grounds and joyful day for me but not nearly as as mine, but I have the advantage The townsfolk live, and life abounds, emotional as walking the aisle when of the written results, based on evi- Through changing seasons, sun and rains, I got uncountable handshakes, hugs, dence, of the scientific discoveries from and kisses. Copernicus to Hawking and beyond to The building in neglect remains. help me understand not only the origin No bells ring n this, my eighty-fifth year, I finally of Earth and all of its life but also the From the lonely spire, Iunderstand that I have been living universe, its origin, and the possibility in two worlds: the world of irrational for life on other planets. When I told And the ground below is suffused with weeds. Christianity and the world of rational our pastor that I was an atheist, he But the townsfolk sing science. I grew out of my childhood asserted, “I knew that long before you And stories inspire belief in Santa Claus and his North did.” With wisdom gleaned from the books one Pole toy factory—why not God and his The morning I told Gene Anne that I reads. heaven? was an atheist, she replied, ”Can we eat Now as twilight yields to darker night, The best explanation for my holding at IHOP this morning?” onto belief in both “God” and evolu- As darkness is dispelled by light, The dawning idea is no longer denied: tion for so long was penned by Joel Gordon E. Hunter had a distinguished career Achenbach, who wrote in the March as a scientist and university educator. He is No wooden door to the other side. 2015 National Geographic, “Science now retired and living in Tennessee. appeals to our rational brain, but our

Save the Date! Stephen Van Eck grew up in Michigan, where he attended Catholic school and was ‘Women in Secularism 4’ a choirboy and an altar boy. He gravitated away from religion in his early teenage September 23–25, 2016 years. His experiences with street-corner fire-and-brimstone evangelists while he was a student at Pennsylvania State University Hyatt Regency Crystal City made clear to him that it was not enough to ignore religion—he must actively oppose Arlington, Virginia it. He is now a full-time writer and activist, with freethought and church-state separation as his primary issues. Van Eck is the author Details will be published in these pages, of With a Skeptical Eye: Poems of Irreligion (Wet Water Publications, 2014), from which and at www.centerforinquiry.net this poem is taken. and www.secularhumanism.org as they become available.

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 63 Reviews

An Urgent, Daring Call to Action Tom Flynn

ith Move Upstream, Freethought WHouse, a small movement press based in Minnesota, branches out into mainstream activism. Well, almost. In truth, longtime green activist Karen I. Move Upstream: A Call to Solve Overpopulation, by Karen I. Shragg names so many names that one Shragg (Farmington, Minn.: Freethought House, 2015, ISBN 978- imagines no larger publisher would 0988493834) 116 pp. Softcover, $16.00. touch this book. That’s too bad, because Shragg’s message is hugely important. She argues that overpopulation is the greatest threat facing humanity, a threat so primary that none of the lesser crises before us (climate change, biodiversity loss, declining freshwater supplies, you name it) can be resolved if we fail to reverse the surge in human ing present problems is often like reach- David Gelbaum, then derailed a vote numbers. Unfortunately, most envi- ing for cough syrup to cure a smoker’s among its membership that could have ronmental-conservation charities want cough.” More bluntly, “Our co-ops are led to the Club’s adopting population already full of families with more than reduction and tighter immigration con- the sustainable number of children who trols as central parts of its agenda. These do not understand that shopping at a are not exceptions, Shragg accuses; co-op cannot make up for overpopula- they’re the norm. “Unfortunately, most environ- tion.” Her jeremiad deserves a broad audi- How bad is overpopulation? Shragg ence, so it’s unfortunate that it is marred mental-conservation charities cites data from the Global Footprint by that bugaboo of small presses: poor want nothing to do with Network suggesting that a population editing. “[L]and becomes more expensive overpopulation concerns.” of two billion is sustainable . . . if those when populations are hemorrhaging,” two billion live like Europeans, not like the text proclaims. Hemorrhaging as a Americans. Current population is over term for breakneck growth? Skyrocketing seven billion. The challenge of chal- or metastasizing might have been better lenges is thus to reduce human numbers. choices. Then there’s the single para- nothing to do with overpopulation Substantially. “We must recognize that graph in which the size of the Ogallala concerns. “We are told to reduce, reuse we shot past the opportunity to stabilize Aquifer is stated as both “174,000 square and recycle, but humanely reducing the population at a sustainable level of kilometers” and “174,000 square miles.” family size is not a part of the mes- 2 billion about 80 years ago,” Shragg From sea-level change to extinctions sage,” Shragg writes. “Activists who are writes. of charismatic megafauna, most of our overpopulation deniers address prob- Yet environmental and conservation ecological problems are likely insoluble if lems without addressing the cause.” organizations aren’t doing their part. we fail to reduce human numbers by Instead of confronting population Myopically, they keep poking around several-fold. If that’s impossible—as it head-on, argues Shragg, most activists downstream. Shragg names them, may well be—the human prognosis is seek more tractable targets downstream: including the Nature Conservancy, the not good. Shragg sounds a vitally import- “Downstream acts focus on symptoms. Clinton Foundation, and the Sierra Club, ant alert. One dares to hope a second Upstream acts focus on the cause of which quietly accepted a $101 million edition with more careful editing will problems. The approach taken to solv- gift from pro-growth Wall Street titan reach the audience it deserves.

64 Free Inquiry February/March 2016 secularhumanism.org Letters continued from p. 12

the charade of saving “souls and allowed to debate ideas as they Christians, having free will is radio. The alternative is, well, persons” somehow implanted in deem fit, we do need to circu- indispensable to salvation—if there really doesn’t exist one embryonic cells or fetal tissue? late novel ideas through aca- there is no guilt there is no past the quantum level. Why Bringing to term forty million demic faculty. Otherwise, we need for salvation and no rea- does this bother some human- abortions performed globally are simply indulging our pre- son for Jesus! It is vital to Islam ists so much? each year and adding the sur- conceived and possibly ill-con- and Judaism too. Randomness Dan Cogswell viving live births to scores of ceived ideas. would have no bearing on the Shepherdstown, An Urgent, Daring Call to Action Tom Flynn other millions of “unintended” It is through untrammeled moral question since if it is the West Virginia children conceived annually dur debate that we learn, correct cause of action, it can confer ing unprotected sex, average our mistakes, and make prog- no freedom on the agent nor, fertility would spike upwards of ress in education and everyday certainly, blame or guilt. 4+ children per woman. World civil life. This is the pragmatism Other than randomness and God and Rape population projected to reach of growth-oriented maturity various mere assertions, Davis ten billion around 2050 would that eventually supplants the offers nothing to support his Regarding the article “God and double every thirty years to forty unbridled idealism of youth. astonishing statement that Rape” by Gary Whittenberger billion by 2110 and continue Giving credence to so-called “The fact that free will must (FI, December 2015/January to grow infinitely. But only on trigger warnings in alleged free emanate from physical pro- 2016), the argument the writer paper. Not on this dying planet speech eliminates the need for cesses does not change the like- makes against the existence called Earth. untrammeled debate and only lihood of its existence.” How of God is rather superfluous, Jim Valentine institutionalizes ignorance and can one be responsible for the since it does nothing more than restate the theological problem Woodland Hills, California misconception. “physical processes” in life that I commend university facul- he could not have chosen? of the existence of evil if there’s an all-good, all-perfect, all-pow- ties for combating censorship Julian W. Haydon erful god. Although men raping on campus—no matter how Warrenton, Virginia More on Trigger politically correct and civilly women is indeed immoral and accommodating it may seem. evil, it is no more so than human Warnings Censorship in any form no mat- beings of either sex murder- Re: “Greta Christina’s ‘Trigger ter how subtle is always a wolf Dan Davis summarizes Robert ing, torturing, and otherwise Warning’: A Response,” by in sheep’s clothing. Doyle’s two-stage model for badly mistreating their fellow humans. What makes this par- Kristine Harley (FI, December John L. Indo decision making as a hybrid of determinism and free will. Yet ticular subset of evil shine any 2015/January 2016). Former Houston, Texas U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis he says the first stage, which new light on the subject? Brandeis once remarked: “. . . The is supposed to be the non-de- By the way, the existence of greatest dangers to liberty lurk terministic one, is influenced evil is a problem only for those in the insidious encroachment Methinks Kristine Harley’s fine by factors that can all be seen who posit a single god, and by men of zeal, well meaning, article against trigger warnings as 100 percent deterministic then only if that god is claimed but without understanding.” should have carried a trigger themselves. This invalidates the to be omnipotent, omniscient, This is an excellent summary of warning . . . for Greta Christina! entire model. and entirely good. It can eas- what is happening in many of Dennis Middlebrooks Here’s an approach to the ily be solved by positing two (or more) gods, one all-good our colleges and universities. Brooklyn, New York question: put in an identical Well-meaning but naive in their situation with the exact same and one all-evil. It’s only the striving for a campus inclusive set of circumstances, are you monotheistic religions that are of ethnic, philosophic, and reli- free to act differently? If you threatened by the problem gious diversity, students attempt Determinism believe there is free will, then of evil, and even then, only if to minimize, ameliorate, or even and Free Will you’ll want to answer “Yes,” but that single all-powerful god is eliminate divergent views with you now have to identify what claimed to be perfectly good euphemisms, trigger warnings, Re: “Determinism vs. Free Will: it was that made you decide and loving. Belief in the exis- or in many cases outright cen- A Middle Ground,” by Dan Davis differently. Unfortunately, that tence of an evil and exceedingly sorship. The end result is not tol- (FI, December 2015/January something has to be random— vicious all-powerful god would erance for diversity but rather 2016). Davis suggests that recent since everything that could not be threatened at all by the the absence of a need for toler- scientific findings pointing to be causal and deterministic is existence of evil in the world ance by creating an ideologically randomness support the case included as a part of “the exact around us. If anything, the fol- uniform and politically correct for free will. If science one day same set of circumstances”— lowers of that god would find monolith. They are actually cre- conclusively proves that there and the only real random pro- the existence of good to be a ating the “undemocratic beast” are true random—causeless— cess is at the quantum level. theological problem. that they had hoped to destroy. events in the universe, it might Instead of fearing the loss Kerwin L. Schaefer As for censorship in the class- be an unhappy fact for me and of free will and struggling to New Bern, North Carolina room, this is absolutely unac- those who have been very com- reconcile it with determin- ceptable. Were students allowed fortable thinking that every ism, we need to celebrate the While I agree with Gary Whit to control what faculty has to effect has a sufficient cause. But absence of free will. We want tenberger’s conclusion that say, there would be no sense in if it is so, it is so. I don’t see to be fully-caused beings that there is no God, his argument their seeking an education in the any real harm. The real impor- base our decisions on preexist- from rape leads to a question first place. They would appear tance of the free will debate ing conditions, whether that’s I have often pondered. I chal- to know it all, so who needs is that it is the most important experience, education, genetics, lenge Premise 1: “If God exists, a professor? Notwithstanding moral question imaginable. For the weather, mood, or being then he is perfectly good.” the fact that students should be the overwhelming majority of distracted by that song on the Why? Why has mankind consis-

secularhumanism.org February/March 2016 Free Inquiry 65 Letters tently attached a list of superla- cities except the young women James Sprenger, translated by ing a greater number of incon- tives to its deities? I see no basis who were to be raped. The Bible Montague Summers. The two sistencies would seem to allow for this, and it certainly doesn’t has God describe himself as jeal- Masters of Sacred Theology earlier questioning than our mere fit the evidence, including reli- ous and he has a hair-trigger examine the practice of witch- moral dictates. gionists’ sacred writings. temper. His constant need of craft. Published in 1486, the However, we can share the Whittenberger posits “God” praise speaks to his incredible first part of this lengthy treatise contemplation of death and as “eternal, all-knowing, all-pow- vanity and narcissism. And he establishes the fact that witches “who will remember.” I’m eighty- erful and perfectly good,” your clearly raped the Virgin Mary. do exist and outlines their activ- five and have had no fear of basic God of Abraham. I disagree Since the God of Abraham is ities. Further, they examine the death since my legal maturity. I with the definition. “Eternal”: no more than a Neolithic myth Divine Permission by which am in quite good health, and so there is no data, but we can with all the expected attributes God allows the Devil, Author of I do not seek the relief from pain. all Evil, to Sin, from which the assume that belief in a deity is of a tribal war lord, the point is I have children, grandchildren, Works of Witches are suffered as old as man’s ability to cower moot. However, if there were a and great grandchildren, but as to take place (capitalization as in fear of a thunderstorm. The God, he’s got some ’splaining Dumont noted, they will likely in the Maleficarum). Why is it all-knowing aspect is called into to do. remember me personally for only that Almighty God permits evil? question by several passages in Curtis Bass a couple generations. The authors cite the Bible and the Jewish Old Testament: Who Many of the figures important Apex, North Carolina numerous theological philoso- told you that you are naked? to history left little of themselves Who told you to eat of the tree? phers in answering this question. behind because of the difficulty Where is your brother? These all To fully understand, one in doing so, but today it is possi- come to mind. Genesis says God Although a nonbeliever, it is my must read the Maleficarum; in ble to leave a flash drive for each repented of creating mankind, opinion that trying to prove part, if evil did not exist, good of my progeny containing both which indicates he did not know that God does not exist is as could not be known, and narrative and pictures. how badly we would turn out. illogical as trying to logi- Almighty God is so omnipotent Further, Satan appears to have cally establish that God does that he can bring good even out Don Burk deceived God at least once. exist. Thus I approached Gary of evil. Whittenberger opines Tucson, Arizona Is God all-powerful? If God Whittenberger’s essay with that if God is good, He would Send submissions to is powerful enough to stop a reservations. In it he rehashes not commit an immoral act. That argument was dispensed Andrea Szalanski, hurricane, tsunami, or ebola yet the oft-used argument that Letters Editor, with centuries ago. chooses not to, then he is a mon- because of the existence of evil FREE INQUIRY, ster. Perhaps he lacks the power. in the world, the rape of girls and Ken McCaffrey P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. The idea of God being per- women in this case, God does Brattleboro, Vermont Fax: (716) 636-1733. fectly good would be laugh- not exist. How to explain the E-mail: able were it not so tragic. existence of evil in God’s world [email protected]. The Hebrews believed their has long challenged believers, Death god required child sacrifice and they have frequently risen In letters intended for publication, (Abraham and Isaac; Jephthah to the occasion. Whether one please include name, address, Re: “Death” by R.G. Dumont (FI, city and state, ZIP code, and his daughter) and engaged accepts them or not, explana- December 2015/January 2016). I and daytime phone number in genocide (the Flood, Sodom, tions as to the existence of evil in understand that people raised in (for verification purposes only). Gomorrah, Ai, Jericho, and our world abound. the Catholic traditions have more other cities of the Canaan plain). One such explanation is found beliefs to submit to logic than Letters should be 300 words or fewer and pertain to previous He apparently enjoined the in The Malleus Maleficarum those of us who were not sub- Free Inquiry articles. Hebrews to kill all people in the by Frs. Heinrich Kramer and jected to such teachings, but hav-

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