Free Will is worth the price of evil on Earth
Letter to the Editor
Mike Dillon humored readers of the Observer on Jan. 31 with a misguided attempt to attack the Christian values of Elizabeth Bauer, who had written, as Catholic doctrine teaches, that sex should wait for marriage. Mike's response was that people can do as they please, because there is no God.
Mike, your attack on the existence of God doesn't seem to have been thought through with any particular care. In fact, it's limited to what has been called the "problem of evil‚" that is, the observation that an all-powerful, all-good God would not allow people to sustain harm, but nonetheless "children suffer and die everyday ... billions of people suffer, starve and die needlessly." The conclusion you draw is that there can be no God — but you overstep the bounds of rational philosophy in an attempt to use logic to justify what are obviously just your personal convictions. As a matter of fact, the most one can hope to show in a consideration of the problem of evil is either that God is not omnipotent,or that He is not omnibenevolent. In the theology of the ancient Greeks, for instance, it was easy to identify the suffering one saw in the world as the consequence of the wrath, jealousy, or carelessness of one or more of the gods — and the problem was solved.
For Christians, the problem is somewhat more complicated, but capable philosophers and theologians since St. Augustine have been grappling with it and, for the most part, getting the best of it. The most common defense of Christian theology, very simply put, is that, faced with the choice of controlling everything Himself or allowing people free will, God took the latter option, even though it carried with it the consequence that people might use their free will to do evil. Even a world with some evil in it is better than a world with no free will, because we have the ability to choose God over evil. This isn't a proof of the existence of God, but it is a very adequate defense against your attempt to disprove Him.
So it surprises me, Mike, that you would base your remarkably insensitive attack on Elizabeth Bauer's values upon a comparatively weak disproof of the existence of God. In fact, you seem to take the atheistic position for granted, and theism as a bizarre delusion — perhaps you picked up this sophisticated postmodernism at Harvard University, a name you took particular care to drop. Perhaps it's just east-coast elitism. In any event, Mike, you would be well-advised to heed the very warning you gave Elizabeth: Please think rationally before inserting simple, mindless opinions into our newspaper.
Alan M. Robinson
Sophomore, Knott Hall
January 31, 2000
All Viewpoint Stories for Tuesday, February 1, 2000
