Read The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy Online
Authors: Kevin S. Decker Robert Arp William Irwin
Skeptical theism, however, has its problems. First of all, it’s mathematically unsound. Even though God may have reasons beyond our comprehension, when you simply crunch the numbers with probability calculus, evil that seems unjustified still reduces the probability of God’s existence.
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Secondly, it’s a bit hypocritical. Theists claim, on the one hand, a wealth of knowledge about God: he’s the omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent, omnipresent, three-in-one creator of the universe who hates some things (abortion and hippies), loves others (Republicans and Cheesy Poofs), and sent his son to die on the cross for our sins. To turn around and demand that his reasons for allowing evil are, on the other hand, beyond our grasp is just too convenient. Lastly, skeptical theism leads to moral agnosticism. For all I know, God has some reason to allow Cartman’s happiness; but for all I know the Holocaust prevented some even greater future evil. If I have to take into account all future possible good consequences in my moral deliberations, I can’t know whether anything is objectively right or wrong.
Biblical scholars know that the story of Job is an inadequate response to the problem of evil. Atheism was not even an option when the book of Job was written, and the belief that God was “all good” and would never cause suffering didn’t become prevalent until after Plato’s (429-347
BC
) philosophical influence had worked its way through Christianity—long after Job was written. Job probably wouldn’t have viewed his suffering as any kind of evidence against God’s existence. At best the author of Job was trying to persuade readers to remain devoted to God during difficult times. In the story, Job’s friends offer up theodicies (reasons why God allows evil), yet the author of Job has God condemn these friends for their words. If the author of Job was trying to answer the problem of evil, he would likely have been doing the very thing he thought God would condemn.
The fact that God condemned Job’s friends for offering excuses on his behalf hasn’t stopped philosophers and theologians from doing so, and nor did it stop Chef. In “Kenny Dies”—the only episode in which Kenny dies and “stays dead” for a while—Stan wrestles with the problem of evil, asking Chef how God could let Kenny die. Chef tells him that God “gives us life and love and health, just so that he can tear it all away and make us cry, so he can drink the sweet milk of our tears. You see, it’s our tears, Stan, that give God his great power.” Although this answer seems cruel, and clearly wrong, it mirrors a certain type of answer to the problem of evil. Like Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and John Calvin (1509-1564), Chef suggests that God allows evil to occur for his own benefit.
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Edwards and Calvin suggest that God allows evil because he wishes to punish evildoers, and this benefits God himself. As Edwards suggests, punishing evildoers is the most perfect way for God to demonstrate his holiness (his hatred of sin) and thus bring glory to himself.
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The idea is that a benefit to God outweighs any evil done to humans.
Not many philosophers find this solution satisfactory. God demonstrating his holiness at our expense—making some do evil, which others suffer, and punishing the evildoers for it—doesn’t seem to be better than Chef’s explanation. We just don’t think God is that cruel. In fact, this would be a bit like Cartman inventing the Jewpacabra—a creature that “drinks blood, hides in the night, and has absolutely no belief in the divinity of Christ”—so that he can look good protecting everyone from it (and be the only one at the Easter egg hunt). Further, it’s not clear why God would have to punish evildoers to demonstrate his holiness. Isn’t God all-powerful? Couldn’t he have established this fact with equal effectiveness in some other (non-evil) way? It certainly seems so. Chef, Edwards, and Calvin clearly aren’t on the right track.
After Stan and Kyle try to sneak into Cartmanland, Cartman decides he needs a security guard. Since the security guard won’t accept rides on the attractions as payment, Cartman’s forced to let two people a day into his park to pay the security guard’s salary. Cartman’s problems escalate when he discovers that he needs ride maintenance, food, drink, cotton candy, video surveillance, a box office, and janitors. Soon, Cartman has a fully functioning and successful amusement park. But since he now has to wait in line to ride his rides, he doesn’t want it anymore and sells it back to the owner for the original million. Most of his money is immediately seized by the IRS (since he didn’t pay any taxes when he owned the park) and the rest goes to Kenny’s family (since Kenny died on the Mine Shaft ride). Now, Cartman is miserable. He stands outside the park, throwing rocks at it, and the security guard who once worked for him sprays mace in his face.
Stan brings Kyle outside to witness these events, saying, “Look Kyle, Cartman is totally miserable … even more miserable than he was before because he had his dream and lost it.” Stan’s observation restores Kyle’s belief in God. Clearly, according to Stan and Kyle, Cartman’s suffering has somehow relieved the tension between the existence of God and the evil of Cartman’s happiness. Their answer is this: God, being all-good, wanted to accomplish a great good—the
perfect suffering
of Cartman. But the only way to accomplish this great good was to give Cartman perfect happiness (a temporary evil) and then rip it away. Since the good of Cartman’s suffering outweighs the evil of his brief happiness, an overall greater good was achieved, justifying the evil of his happiness.
This answer mirrors a common way in which theists—believers in God—answer the problem of evil. They challenge one premise in the argument, the suggestion that God would prevent evil if he wanted to and could, suggesting he might have other desires that trumped the desire to eliminate evil. In other words, they suggest that God might not guarantee the absence of evil because there might be something he desires more than the absence of evil, something that
requires
the existence of evil. What might that be? The answer: the presence of good. Although it’s true that God doesn’t like evil, it’s also true that God loves (and wants to accomplish) good. If certain goods can only be achieved by allowing certain evils—as long as the good outweighs the evil allowed—then allowing that evil is justified. In fact, since the world is a better place if those evils are allowed and outweighed, you would expect God to allow them because he wants the world to be
as good as possible
. The argument says that the existence of evil doesn’t contradict God’s existence, because it’s not true that God would necessarily prevent all evil. God would—and should—allow evil that accomplishes a greater good, and so the presence of evil isn’t conclusive evidence against God’s existence. According to this “greater goods” response to the problem of evil, the mutual existence of both God and evil is logically possible.
But questions remain. What kind of goods can only be accomplished by allowing evil? Stan and Kyle see Cartman’s suffering as a good that could only be accomplished at the expense of Cartman’s brief happiness. The theist philosopher Richard Swinburne suggests that God allows evil in order to create goods like compassion, generosity, and courage.
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You can’t compassionately heal the sick unless there is sickness. You don’t need to generously offer to find a place like the planet Marclar for Starvin’ Marvin to live, unless Marvin is indeed starvin’. Mysterion can’t courageously save the world from Cthulhu unless BP releases the Elder God to wreak havoc on the world by accidentally tearing open a portal to another dimension by drilling for oil. These good acts are made possible only because they are responses to evil.
But there are a couple of problems here. First, not all evils have goods flow out of them in this way; the evil of the history channel’s Thanksgiving special comes to mind. Also, remember that in order to justify the evil done in service of good, the evil has to be
necessary
to bring about the goods and these goods have to outweigh the evil. But, as wonderfully compassionate as most doctors are, none think their compassion justifies or outweighs the suffering of their patients. As generous as the boys are to help Marvin, they’d much rather he was never starvin’ in the first place. Mysterion’s courage doesn’t outweigh the havoc that Cthulhu wreaked. So, what good might both outweigh and only be possible because of certain evils?
Most often, theists propose that the greater good that justifies God’s allowing evil is
human free will
. As Augustine (354-430) put this argument, only free acts have the possibility to be good acts; if we don’t have free will to choose between good and evil, nothing we do is truly good.
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Unless we have the option of
choosing
evil, we can’t be given moral credit for choosing good, and if we cannot be given moral credit for an action, it can’t be truly good. So without free will, there can be no good. But if we are to have free will—if we are to truly have the option of doing evil—we must remain unhindered. God can’t stop Cartman from selling ass burgers to his fellow classmates if Cartman is going to have the freedom to not do so. Likewise, God can’t force Cartman to set up Token with Nicole (in “Cartman Finds Love”) if his action is be to be truly morally good (which, arguably, it is not anyway given Cartman’s motivations). The “risk of evil” is necessary if there is to be any good in the world. Since God loves good—and presumably wants to accomplish good more than he wants to avoid evil—the risk of evil is one that he is willing to take (even though he hates evil). If so, the existence of evil is compatible with the existence of God.
Why, though, is free will a greater good? If God would have interfered with Hitler’s free will and made him decide to like the Jews, instead of exterminating them, wouldn’t that have been worth it? Is the preservation of Hitler’s free will really more important than the lives of 6 million Jews? Those who defend the free will solution answer this objection by suggesting that the greater good is found in preserving human free will in general. Hindering free will in one instance might lead to a greater good, sure, but if God does that once, he would have to do it every time. And if God always steps in to prevent us from making evil decisions, how are our decisions to do right truly free and thus morally good? To preserve the greater good of free will in general, God has to maintain a policy of never interfering with our decisions. He has to let us choose what we will and live with the consequences, even if that risks genocide.
But there are still a couple of problems here. First, the free will solution is contrary to the way most people conceive of God. Most people think that God is in control of everything—who will be elected president, who they will marry, whether or not they will get that job they applied for, whether Cartman’s Christian rock band “Faith + 1” will go double myrrh, and so on. This is presumably why people pray to God, to make such things happen. But God can control elections only if he controls how people
choose
to vote; he can choose who you marry only if he controls whether your spouse
chooses
to marry you; he can get you that job only if he controls the decisions of your potential boss; he can make Faith + 1 go double myrrh only if he controls what people decide to buy. So, you can accept the free will solution only if you accept that God really
isn’t
in control of such things. Rejecting the idea that God controls human decisions might get you out of the problem of evil, but it entails that God isn’t really in control of the world. The free will defense comes at a high price.
A second problem is that the free will defense only addresses half of the problem. Sure, it might explain evils resulting from human decisions, but not all evil is caused by humans. After all, in the “Cartmanland” episode, part of the reason that Kyle lost his faith was because he developed a hemorrhoid. And we can’t explain that true, anal evil by pointing to human free will. Such evils are called “natural evils,” and they also include earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, diseases, and Mecha-Streisand—all events that cause suffering but are not caused by humans.
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Ultimately, one wonders, if God is the designer of our universe but is also supposed to be all-good, why did he design a natural order that makes such evils inevitable? If I built a house with puppy-killing machines (that randomly strike out and kill any puppy within reach) embedded into the walls and then made my puppies live in my house, I could hardly be said to be a loving master of my puppies. Yet our world is designed with human-killing machines like earthquakes and diseases built right in. If the world has a designer, how could we think the designer is morally perfect? The free will solution doesn’t even address this problem.
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Perhaps the best attempt at a solution to both the moral and natural problem of evil is John Hick’s “soul making” theodicy. In his book
Evil and the God of Love
, Hick suggests that evil—both moral and natural—occurs in the world so that we, individually and as a species, can develop our character.
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Even if God ensured that we always acted in good ways—perhaps by bestowing upon us perfect characters—those actions wouldn’t be as good as actions that come from characters that we develop
ourselves
. To ensure that the world contains the best kind of actions, God allows evil to exist so that we can respond to it, developing and perhaps even perfecting our characters. So, even though specific evils may go unanswered, the world as a whole is better if we develop our characters, something we can only do by responding to evil. Hick says the presence of evil, both moral and natural, is justified.
Hick’s reasoning mirrors that of cartoon Jesus in “Are You There God? It’s Me, Jesus.” In this episode, the South Park masses are ready to crucify Jesus because he promised that God would appear at the millennium, and he hasn’t. Stan and Jesus have a conversation in which Jesus claims that “life is about problems, and overcoming those problems, and growing and learning from obstacles. If God just fixed everything for us, then there would be no point in our existence.” Even though Jesus is talking about why God doesn’t always answer prayers, the point seems to be the same. The reason that God doesn’t “fix everything for us” is because, if he did, we wouldn’t be able to learn and grow from facing obstacles. And, after all, our learning and growing is important (even more important than the elimination of evil).