A well-meaning friend-of-a-friend has given me a copy of Lee Strobel's The Case For Faith to read. Having already read the precursor, The Case For Christ, I was expecting very little of this book. Nevertheless, the standards of thought in Christian apologetics always astound me, so I felt the need to share.
The book takes the form of a series of interviews with theologians, ostensibly in response to an interview with former fundamentalist preacher Charles Templeton, each of which attempts to answer one of Strobel's 'Big Eight' objections to Christianity (NB: lack of evidence for Jesus is not among them; presumably Strobel is under the illusion that he has covered this satisfactorily in his previous pamphlet).
Firstly, the book is very poorly written. Strobel's 'homely asides' are repetitive and filled with invective against atheists and praise for Christians. In each of these interviews, Strobel's role is to unconvincingly play the sceptic, while posing questions that so obviously play to what the interviewee was about to say anyway that it is tempting to think they were written in afterwards. A typical example from Chapter One:
'Are there any other ways in which you believe [the problem of] evil works against atheism?'
'Yes there are...'
But philosophy does not stand or fall on the quality of the writing (or at least, it should not), so let's look at the actual points Strobel makes in his first interview.
Objections One: Since Evil And Suffering Exist, A Loving God Cannot; Peter John Kreeft, PhD.
Statistics:
CS Lewis quotes: 3
Mentions of 'former atheists': 1 ('agnostic-turned-Christian Sheldon Vanauken)
How do I know John Kreeft is like me? Because Strobel tells me he does't reside 'in the cloistered ivory towers of academia'.
How forceful is Strobel in presenting the question? Very. He decides to 'hit Kreeft head-on with Templeton's blunt objections [...] confronting Kreeft with the same emotional intensity that Templeton had displayed [...] the professor's eyes were riveted on me. Facing him squarely, leaning forward in my chair for emphasis, [...] in a rather accusatory tone [...] I thumped my hand on his desk [...] with a mock air of triumph [...] we were clearly moving toward the climax of our discussion. [...]' etc.
To give Strobel his due, this is the one question that I think everyone would include in their 'Big Eight'. So how does Kreeft deal with it?
Firstly, we need to get the anti-atheist venom out of the way. Being certain that God does not exist, Kreeft confidently assures us, is 'intellectually arrogant'. (I am reminded that Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion points out that Christians are far more likely to claim certain knowledge of God's existence than atheists are to claim certain knowledge of God's non-existence, so I wonder who is being 'arrogant' here.)
There's plenty more in this vein later on too. Take this, for instance:
'Atheism is cheap on people, because it snobbishly says nine out of ten people through history have been wrong about God and have had a lie at the core of their hearts.'
So have nine out of ten people through history been Christian? Or is exactly the same true of all religions, as well as atheism?
Anyway, back to Kreeft's points. First, out comes the 'mystery card'. We can't know what God intends, therefore we can't know that suffering doesn't serve some greater good. We're told that God cannot make the world too easy to understand or we wouldn't need faith (we're not told what's so great about faith as opposed to rational or empirical knowledge). Of course, Kreeft then spends the remainder of the interview telling us with certainty (but not 'intellectual arrogance', of course) exactly what God does intend by suffering. Apparently, mystery serves as a smokescreen only when Kreeft wants it to.
Next we get the argument from morality. Kreeft sees no difference between suffering and evil (so earthquakes are evil?), and if evil exists then God must exist. Kreeft offers no support for either his claim that Evil exists as a force, or that only God could explain it if it does (there are, of course, numerous secular explanations of objective morality even if you choose to reject my own favoured explanation; even the possibility of one of these being true falsifies Kreeft's point here). Instead, we're treated to discourse of this level of understanding:
'If there is no creator and therefore no moment of creation, then everything is the result of evolution. If there was no begining or first cause, then the universe must have always existed. That means the universe has been evolving for an infinite period of time - and, by now, everything should already be perfect. There would have been plenty of time for evolution to have finished and evil to have been vanquished.'
It takes a special kind of genius to be able to pack quite so much drivel into so small a space. I gave up trying to count the number of fundamental misconceptions packed into that one paragraph, and instead leave it as an exercise for the interested reader.
Things get no better as Kreeft assures us we will know the truth when we meet God after we die. 'When the atheist dies and encouters God [...] he'll recognise that atheism was a cheap answer.' I concede that there is a cheap answer in there somewhere. I don't think it's where our theologically-inclined friend claims it is.
Next Kreefs tells us that God doesn't actully create evil; God created the potentiality for evil, but humans actualise it. In other words, God made evil possible, but it's humans who actually commit it. Aside from being a dubious moral distinction, this is plainly inapplicable to, say, eathquakes and other... well, 'acts of God'.
Now Kreeft rolls out the theological 'big guns'; the free will defence. 'It's a self-contradiction - a meaningless nothing - to have a world where there's real choice while at the same time no possibility of choosing evil', he assures us, apparently oblivious to the fact that he has just consigned Heaven and a free God to the theological dustbin. It is far from obvious that the only possibilities are complete free will or no free will at all - any decent parent tries to influence their child's behaviour, but we rarely accuse them of 'destroying free will in a way worse than genocide'. I mean, is Kreeft really saying that appearing in front of Hitler and commanding him to be nice to people would have been worse than the Holocaust? Besides, as any first-year philosophy undergraduate knows (but apparently neither Kreeft nor Strobel notices), free will is irrelevant to much of the suffering in the world, which is caused by natural disasters. Did I mention earthquakes yet?
Now Kreeft simply denies the apparent facts: 'The evidence is that God is all-powerful'. Of course, he cannot give any example of such evidence; at best he has explained away evidence to the reverse.
Back to the philosophical backwaters - perhaps there are 'hidden goods'. Now Professor Kreef, you're repeating yourself, you've played the mystery card already. But never mind, just give me an example of what could possibly justify genocide, and... oh, you're off on another track.
Perhaps pain teaches us and 'builds character'. In what way does dying painfully teach us anything? And why do Christians seem just as prone to pain and suffering as others? Surely once you're in a relationship with God, pain is more likely to convince you God does not exist?
No response, so on with the soundbites. Suffering produces 'second order goods' like perseverance. Yes it does, but it also produces 'second order evils' like sadism and fear. Is there any particular reason to think the former outweigh the latter?
A world without suffering is pointless. Yes, possibly - but that doesn't address the question of why there is quite so much suffering does it?
Now here, at last, Kreeft thinks he has me, and wheels out his 'Aha! Gotcha!' play. There is no dividing line where we can stop preventing suffering, he says. If God prevents genocide, he would have to prevent slander too, and then he would have to abolish free will altogether. This is, of course, nonsense. Unless Kreeft is complaining that the world contains exactly the perfect amount of suffering to bring the maximum number of people into relationship with God, God could easily prevent a few people from suffering. And as Kreeft himself points out, to those few people that would be really very important indeed. What parent would shrug off the death of their own child as neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things? And Kreeft is telling us that God feels every individual's pain just as much as they do themselves. Having lost five children, what parent would say there is no point in saving a sixth? Only Kreeft's God, it would seem. To say nothing of the natural disasters like earthquakes that are clearly not caused by free will at all.
So taking Kreeft's point rather more seriously than it deserves, perhaps humans are actually far too nice to each other? Perhaps we're not causing the requisite amount of suffering by freely choosing to do evil, so God in His wisdom needs to throw in the occasional earthquake or tsunami to keep up at the optimum level of suffering. (Just like he will in Heaven.)
It was at around this point that I needed to take a break to clear my head of the stupid.
Kreeft defends his bizarre position as best he can. 'Every time you use force to take away evil, you prevent freedom'. Still wondering why a quiet word with Hitler is worse than a Holocaust. Or an earthquake. I'm a little aware we're running out of pages in this chapter, and Kreeft has not even mentioned natural disasters. But let's stick with his example. Is a parent who prevents a child from hurting a helpless baby so utterly destroying the freedom of the first child that the parent should not have intervened? Kreeft seems to think so. If I see a woman knifed to death in the street in front of me, should I be pleased that the world is a better place for the fear and suffering created, even if I can't see how? Again, it would appear that under Kreeft's bizarre morality, this is the only rational reaction.
But never fear! There will (Kreeft confidently assures us 'intellectually arrogant' atheists) be restitution in Heaven. God will reward and punish in the afterlife. So then it's actions, not belief, that get people to Heaven? Oops, sorry St Paul, sounds like you were wrong after all. Besides, I thought this was all a big mystery - how can Kreeft now suddenly be so sure of the details of what God wants? Perhaps God sees some great good that we mere humans cannot in sending good people to Hell?
Kreeft continues to trot out the unconvincing homespun theology, while Strobel eggs him on with exaggerated shows of emotion ('it was time to cut to the core of the issue [...] I challenged Kreeft with a question that crystallised the controversy'). Suffering brings us to repentance, Kreeft tells us, which is all part of God's plan. So why did God make it that way? Kreeft is happy to claim that joy also brings people closer to God, so his consistency seems seriously dented. 'There are no good people', he declaims. Well, Kreeft may think that, but then again all his friends and Christians. Is he seriously saying that God made not just a free race but an evil one? That deciding to be good is actually impossible? 'We're ontologically good, but morally we're not'. We're 'good' in some way other than morally? What is non-moral goodness? We are - as Hitchens put it - created sick and commanded to be well? Doesn't say much for God either as a designer or as a moral guide, does it?
Having run through this sub-standard presentation of very standard (and long discredited) theodicies, Strobel blithely assures me that 'At least [Kreeft] wasn't offering canned explanations'. I would love to know what Strobel would consider a 'canned explanation'.
I can, however, end on a (comparative) high note, though I have to say I feel rather like someone standing on a molehill at the bottom of the Grand Canyon when I talk about 'comparatively high'. Finally, Kreeft says something that might be vaguely true. God cannot explain suffering, but he offers us companionship when we suffer. Here, at last, I can very slightly come alongside him. We have to strip away all the unfounded assertions (Jesus took all the suffering that has ever existed onto himself) and the theological accretions (only a God that has suffered can offer redemption), but we are left with the claim that religion offers some people solace - which is true. But it doesn't really explain why there has to be quite so much suffering in the world, or why the devout suffer just as much as the rest of us even when it destroys their faith.
Strobel started out by quoting Sheldon Vanuaken: 'If only villains got broken backs or cancers, if only cheaters and crooks got Parkinson's disease, we should see a sort of celestial justice in the universe.' Kreeft never comes close to answering this, and Strobel seems not even to notice.
And he never mentions earthquakes once.
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