This semester, I am taking a course that is new to my college’s catalog: Philosophy of Religion. It is an introductory Philosophy course, and in it we cover various topics pertaining to problems within theistic religion. The first topic of discussion is the Problem of Evil. The syllogism is as follows:
If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omni benevolent, and omniscient.
If God is omnipotent, then he would have power to eliminate evil.
If God is omniscient, then God would know of all the evils that exist.
If God is omni benevolent, then God would have a desire to eliminate all evil.
Evil exists.
If evil and God exist, then God either can not eliminate evil, will not eliminate evil, or doesn’t know about evil.
Therefore, God (as defined) doesn’t exist.
The syllogism is logically valid, but are the premises true? 1-4 are true by definition, so let’s look at just 5 and 6. 5 is probably the most debatable, because what can be defined as evil? There are a number of defenses to explain the existence of evil: the Free Will Defense, the Greater Goods Defense, and the Greater Unknown Purpose Defense. I will look at these defenses and see if they hold up.
Free Will Defense
The Free Will Defense states that in order to have beings that are significantly free willed, they cannot be causally determined to do only what is right. In other words, free will necessitates evil because in order to choose between good and bad, a bad choice must be made available. This seems reasonable at first, because it shifts the blame for the existence of evil towards free-willed creatures making evil choices. God didn’t voluntarily choose these evils. In order to create free creatures, he had to allow evil as an unfortunate byproduct.
However, there are certain cases in which this does not apply. For example, in cases of natural evils. That is, evils independent of man. These evils can include the suffering that occurs as a result of some animals being carnivorous. Surely there are ways around allowing animals to be killed for food by sharper-toothed animals. Perhaps all animals could be vegetarian–or even photosynthetic. Other natural evils include hurricanes, disease, and earthquakes. How necessary is it to have such things on our earth?
The Greater Goods Defense
The Greater Goods Defense states that perhaps some evils are necessary to create a greater good in the end. This goes along with Leibniz’s work, and is his core argument in attempting to solve the problem of evil. In his writings, he called this world the “best of all possible worlds” by which he meant that maybe there was no other way to create a better world containing any less evil. He reverses the problem and states that since God possesses the qualities stated in the premises, that this must be the best of all possible worlds. However, this creates a weak argument, because one only has to find a single example of something that would make the world better off overall. It also suggests that God is constrained to do all that is good. In that case, then in what sense does God exercise free will?
This argument is demolished by my photosynthetic animal I mentioned above. If no animal consumed meat, then there would be much less gratuitous suffering in the natural world, and as a result, a better overall world. It’s also hard to see why the world is better off with things such as AIDS, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Sure, things like that bring people together, but there must be alternatives to putting thousands of people through misery, death, and displacement. It doesn’t seem like a reasonable trade to me. Maybe I just can’t understand the purpose. This brings me to the final major defense: the Greater Unknown Purpose defense.
Greater Unknown Purpose Defense
The Greater Unknown Purpose Defense states that we as humans are incapable of understanding what the purpose of evil might be. It is outside of our boundaries to judge something that God does as good or evil anyway, since he makes the rules. But then, on what criteria do we say that God is benevolent?
Some say that we must go through this period of injustice, which is justified in the end through eternal life in either heaven or hell. However, if evil is a necessary byproduct of free will, then how will evil be kept out of the afterlife? Will there be free will in the afterlife? If choices are prevented from being made in the afterlife and we experience only eternal bliss, then why even bother with this period of injustice and free will business? Why not skip to the bliss part?
Other responses
There are some more, less popular responses to this problem. One states that we as humans are sinful creatures, and that evil is punishment for sins committed. However, I do not see a child being tormented by a pedophile as a sinful creature. Children are innocent to me, incapable of truly understanding something is wrong and choosing to do it. In addition, if this were true, we would see proportionally more bad things happening to bad people. Instead, we see both bad and good things happening to both bad and good people.
Here is my response to the problem of evil: I question the fifth premise: evil exists. The universe I see is one with no good and no evil. There is nothing inherently evil about anything. Nature is indifferent to everything. It just keeps moving along, unaware of anything going on within it. Yes, there are people who choose to do what we call “evil”, but the fact that carnivores, hurricanes, and diseases exist do not mean that evil exists. I think the way that evil is defined, it is constrained to human activity. A creator, nature, or whatever you want to call it is not evil, because evil is something that man does. I would also question the first four premises since there is nothing to indicate that any of them are true, but I will probably get to those later on.
Conclusion
If we are going to suggest that a creator being could be evil, I would do it like this:
If God exists, then God is omniscient.
If God knows through his omniscience before creating anyone whether or not they will spend eternity being punished in hell, then God can be considered evil.
Hell bound people are created.
Therefore, God is either evil or imaginary.
It’s not an airtight syllogism, because I am not a trained philosopher, but my logic is this. The more data we are able to collect from our surroundings, the more accurate our predictions can become. If we know the weight of a falling object from x height, and the acceleration due to gravity, we can predict with extreme accuracy the force that object will have when it hits the ground. If we know the mass of a falling object from x height, and the acceleration due to gravity, we can predict with extreme accuracy the kinetic energy that object will have when it hits the ground. (Thanks, Nick.)
Similarly, an omniscient being would know all data that is possible to know about everything–right down to the atomic level. This would allow this being to make ~99.9% accurate predictions about everything, accounting for all variables that can affect any outcome. This includes our thoughts, since our thoughts are ultimately products of (presumably predictable) physical processes. With this knowledge at hand, God would know whether or not a person will end up in hell (he has the criteria for determining such a fate), and chooses to create that person anyway. This sounds evil to me. Free will doesn’t even come in to play–the person’s free choices were known beforehand!
Predeterminism and free will seem to be mutually exclusive, so we are right back in square one. What do you think?
The following is a paper that I wrote for my ethics and values class about Michael Crichton’s views on global warming and the ethical implications of his views. I know I havn’t written anything in a very long time due to classes and stuff, so I thought I’d post at least something that I have written.
Introduction
After reading Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, I was intrigued by his opinions and thoughts on global climate change. In the appendix of his book, Crichton briefly summarizes his views on the subject. Crichton believes that:
we know very little about the climate or what changes it,
humans are the cause of rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels—but are contributing little to warming,
it is much more likely that there are external factors that we are overlooking causing what little warming trends there are, and
we have better things to worry about than infantisimal global climate change.
Crichton sees that there are many things that go unnoticed when studying climate change, such as solar warming and land usage. If these are contributing a little to warming, how much blame is left for CO2—and not only all CO2, but emissions solely from human activity? It stands to reason that if our effect on the environment’s temperature is minimal, we have better things to be worrying about.
Crichton goes further to say that a scientific consensus says nothing of the validity of that consensus. There is no possible way of knowing what will happen in the future, so to make major decisions and enact policies based on models involving abundant superfluous variables is ludicrous. There were no airplanes and very few cars one hundred years ago. This demonstrates how much a global civilization can change in one hundred years. How likely is it that in one hundred years we will even still be using fossil fuels as energy?
Taking Crichton’s view, I plan to demonstrate that the only reasonable and ethical approach to the problem of climate change is to ignore it. If we really are not responsible for a majority of the climate change, and whatever change we do make cannot have immense unfavorable effects, then we have no responsibility to control it. By taking this approach, we can focus our attention, energy, and money on sensible objectives such as eradicating disease and ending poverty—not unlike Bjorn Lomborg’s views.
I will begin discussing how Crichton agrees and disagrees with the current scientific consensus. I will then move on to reasons why he believes these things and criticisms of his beliefs. Finally, I will analyze his beliefs for myself and discuss why I agree or disagree with his ideas and conclusions.
Crichton’s agreement
I would like to start detailing the areas where Crichton agrees with mainstream scientific consensus. In the Author’s Message of State of Fear, Crichton tells us that he agrees that the Earth’s CO2 is increasing in quantity, and the probable cause is anthropogenic. He does admit that there are truths within the global warming community, and is not shy about making his agreement one of his first points: “Atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, and human activity is the probable cause”. In a video interview with Charlie Rose, Crichton states that he believes that the earth is getting warmer—about six tenths of a degree in the past century. He also believes that environmental awareness is “desperately important”, as he learned from his environmentally aware mother.
His views here are undeniably part of the majority consensus, and are outlined in detail in mainstream reports and studies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The 2007 IPCC report summary for policymakers outlines the anthropogenic cause of CO2: “The primary source of the increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial period results from fossil fuel use, with land use change providing another significant but smaller contribution”. Crichton states in the Charlie Rose interview that “I absolutely believe that warming is occurring, humans are involved, and it’s going to continue for the next 100 years”. Clearly, the IPCC and Crichton are on the same page here.
Crichton’s disagreement
So, Crichton does agree with some of the science behind climate change. He believes that we should be both aware of and careful with our environment, as well as believing there is an anthropogenic cause for global warming in the form of our CO2 emissions. This is, however, where the similarities end. The difference between Crichton’s skepticism and mainstream science is how serious of a threat he believes global climate change to be. I will now outline what Crichton believes, backed up by secondary evidence sources.
First and foremost, Crichton points out the fact that a scientific consensus means absolutely nothing. Case in point: The Geocentric Model was once held by the majority of astronomers until at least the sixteenth century. So was the idea that the continents did not move. Consensus is the business of politics. Science requires only one investigator who happens to have gotten his numbers right. Crichton believes that the most relevant element of science is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great mostly because they broke the consensus. It is a fact of history that the consensus has been wrong in the past. As Crichton elaborated his position in an NPR debte, he is not saying that this consensus is wrong, but rather that the consensus itself is not indicative of its truth.
While he believes that we should care for our environment, he does find major flaws in the thinking of the Global Warming movement. He stated on his website in January 2005:
In my view, our approach to global warming exemplifies everything that is wrong with our approach to the environment. We are basing our decisions on speculation, not evidence. Proponents are pressing their views with more PR than scientific data. Indeed, we have allowed the whole issue to be politicized—red vs blue, Republican vs Democrat. This is in my view absurd. Data aren’t political. Data are data. Politics leads you in the direction of a belief. Data, if you follow them, lead you to truth.
This is one of the main issues he has with the global warming movement. We have allowed the science of climate change to become political. He believes that there are many examples of this in the past, citing fear mongers from his childhood warning him of overpopulation and resource scarcity.
Crichton’s website demonstrates one example of how the data has been faintly distorted to meet a political end. Refer to figure 1 below to see this example. Figure 1a is the graph used when the goal is to inspire alarm and concern. All of those jagged edges appear extreme. Figure 1b is the exact same graph, but with the bottom sixteen degrees. After it has been stretched out proportionally, those jagged edges are in reality miniscule quiverings in comparison to the total temperature. This is much like magnifying the seemingly smooth surface of a ball bearing—only to find out that it is rough up close.
Crichton does not solely blame human activities for all or even most of the warming trends. He thinks it is much more likely that there are external factors, as well as mistakes made in calculations that predict and measure climate change. The uncertainty is also beyond a reasonable level on which to base major and expensive decisions such as conforming to the Kyoto protocol. In fact, the first point he makes in his book covers this: “We know astonishingly little about every aspect of the environment…in every debate, all sides overstate the extent of existing knowledge and its degree of certainty.”
This level of uncertainty is illustrated by the IPCC’s own reports. Since any prediction is based only on models with many variables, all predictions made will naturally vary to some degree. The example Crichton uses is the chart of predictions for temperature changes for the year 2100. Temperature anomalies range from one and a half to six degrees Celsius in the positive direction. Crichton points out that in the real world, a four hundred percent variation is unacceptable. Does your vacation last fifteen days or sixty days? Will the new construction cost one and a half million dollars or six million dollars? In the real world, people simply do not take bets on such high uncertainties.
The reason the uncertainties are so high is that the data heavily rely on scenarios to predict the future climate change, since there is no way of knowing what the future will be like with complete certainty. Again, these scenarios involve many, many variables, and it is very difficult to know how tweaking one variable will affect the others. However, the IPCC still submits the scenarios in its summary for policy makers in the form of a graph as seen below in Figure 2.
Crichton’s skepticism of anthropogenic climate change is enforced by research that is done considering factors other than CO2 as the main temperature-rising culprit. In a 2002 research paper in Astronomy and Geophysics magazine done by Sami Solanki, the main conclusion of the paper was that solar warming trends have the capability to provide significant warming to the earth’s temperature:
This [graph relating sunspots to climate change] is consistent with a causal relationship between the two [temperature and solar activity] and supports, but by no means proves, the view that the Sun has had an important, possibly even dominant influence on our climate in the past.
This study suggests that the sun may be responsible for up to twenty five hundredths of a degree Celsius of warming in the past century. This is known as the solar variation theory. An addition cause of global warming could be land usage. Additional research done by Ming Cai and Eugenia Kalnay from the University of Maryland suggests that there is a strong effect of both urbanization and land use on the mean temperature for that area. The study suggests that the total effect of these factors contributes around three tenths of a degree Celsius for the century.
Crichton wonders that if these estimates are correct, then that leaves only five hundredths of a degree of this century’s warming—six tenths of a degree—can be attributed to CO2. Yes, there is a correlation between CO2 and temperature increase, but nobody knows how much of a temperature increase can be attributed to purely CO2. It does not seem like it makes much sense to spend time, money, and energy reducing carbon emissions if they have little effect on the global temperature.
Ethical Implications of Crichton’s View
Crichton believes very strongly that it is a big mistake to concern ourselves with global warming. The central facet of his argument is based on the question “What crisis?”. He does not see a crisis in global climate change, and believes that there are much better things to worry about right now.
It bothers Crichton that we are concerning ourselves with something that might or might not happen in one hundred years, based only on models with so many variables that try to account for unpredictable human behavior. He believes that we will naturally make the transition from carbon to hydrogen fuels, just as we have done in the past. Crichton reminds us that as far as he knows, nobody had to mandate automobile purchases to get people off of horses. Humans will naturally pursue better and more efficient methods of luxury, and nothing needs to be forced, especially if it is based on uncertainty.
The following is a quote taken from an NPR debate, and I think it’s telling of Crichton’s ethical position on the subject:
Everyday 30,000 people on this planet die of the diseases of poverty. There are, a third of the planet doesn‘t have electricity. We have a billion people with no clean water, we have half a billion people going to bed hungry every night. Do we care about this? It seems that we don‘t. It seems that we would rather look a hundred years into the future than pay attention to what‘s going on now. I think that’s unacceptable. I think that‘s really a disgrace. This doesn‘t need to happen. We‘re allowing it to happen. And I don‘t know what‘s wrong with the rich self-centered societies that we live in the west that we are not paying attention to the conditions of the wider world. And it does seem to me that if we use arguments about the environment to turn our back on the sick and the dying of our shared world, and that’s our excuse to ignore them, then we have done a true and terrible thing. And it‘s awful.
In summation, Crichton believes there are much more serious matters at hand than what might happen in one hundred years.
Our ethical responsibilities lie with developing the world, and helping people who are living in poverty. We should not feel responsible to saving the planet until we have sufficient evidence that it is going to hell. The worse estimates predict warming of a few degrees Celsius in the next one hundred years. We have only warmed six tenths of a degree in the past century. This hardly seems like an emergency to Crichton.
Critics of Crichton
Crichton holds many controversial views, and naturally, this has drawn his fair share of critics. Scientists involved deeply with global warming have written responses to Crichton’s claims, including James Hansen. Crichton claims in his book that Hansen was off in his estimate by three hundred percent. Hansen does not know how Crichton calculated that number, and demonstrates that he was only off by fractions of a degree in all three of his scenarios.
Environmental Defense is another organization that is critical of Crichton. In a March 2005 article, they analyzeState of Fear and conclude that Crichton is flat out wrong in some cases and very selective in the evidence he uses to prove his point. While Crichton believes that many scientists are “cooking” their data, Environmental Defense dismisses this claim as nonsensical. Crichton offers little data to back up this claim.
They go further to point out that in theory, it is best not to act upon uncertainty. Crichton would agree with this statement. However, this is not the way that things work in practice. We use seat belts while driving and take out life insurance policies. They state that the worst possible things we can do is sit on our hands in the face of the mounting evidence that global warming is occurring and having harmful effects on our environment. The ecosystem risks far outweigh the inconvenience of cutting carbon emissions, so Crichton’s concerns of uncertainty are moot.
RealClimate has also written a review and analysis of State of Fear. In it, they cover multiple areas of the book, including Crichton’s example of a data skewer—the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE). The website agrees that the UHIE does make a difference in urban areas, but makes the argument that obviously the climate scientists have accounted for these differences. After all, the data are not skewed on windy days opposed to non-windy days, as the UHIE would dictate. Wind is known to diminish the effects of the UHIE, but a recent paper published in Nature has shown that the effects are minimal or even nonexistent.
Another point that RealClimate brings to the table is Crichton’s claim that, since we do not know everything about climate change, we actually know nothing. Just because we do not know everything, this does not mean that we do not know something about climate change. We do know enough to act, and make a difference in carbon emissions. Some of the scenarios involve changes in human activities, such as carbon emission. This is one of the reasons the scenarios differ so much—they account for all kinds of variables. So, if these scenarios and predictions are right, we really can make a difference by reducing emissions.
Summary and My Opinion
Crichton’s website states that he will no longer be discussing issues regarding State of Fear and related themes—this includes the topic of global climate change—in the future. However, in the time that Crichton has dedicated to discussing the issue, he has laid a foundation for skepticism against the majority scientific consensus. In his numerous interviews, speeches, books, and publications, he has given very clear reasons for his skepticism. He believes that there simply is not enough evidence to show that global warming is derived anthropogenically through carbon emissions.
Crichton believes that humans are likely the cause of global greenhouse gas increase. He also believes that the earth is warming, although he believes it is nearly impossible to tell what an “average” might be with something as varying as climate. He does not believe that there is enough evidence to demonstrate a solitary correlation between greenhouse gas increase and temperature increase, because there are other factors actively involved in climate change. Humans cannot be solely to blame when other elements are considered.
For the most part, I agree with nearly all Crichton has to say. I do not believe that six tenths of a degree temperature change in either direction is enough for cause for concern. I think that there are many things that we do not know, and the simple fact that there is a consensus says nothing of the validity of a claim. In fact, the consensus may fight to actively perpetuate something that is not there.
I think we have more important things to worry about than miniscule climate change. We have people going to bed hungry, people without electricity or access to health care services. It makes more sense to me to develop the world economically and not worry about warming of a couple of degrees. A couple of degrees are nothing. We have more of a variation between city and country due to the heat island effect. If the earth does warm, we can—and will—survive just fine. I suspect we will probably also be glad we did not waste our time keeping it a couple of degrees cooler. The newly developed world can afford air conditioning.
Sources
A conversation with Michael Crichton. Rose, Charlie. PBS. 19 February 2007. Link.
“Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers.” 21 October 2007. Link.
Crichton, Michael. State of Fear. New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2004.
Hansen, James. “Michael Crichton’s ‘Scientific Method’.” 02 November 2007. Link.
Kalnay, Eugenia and Ming, Cai. “Impact of Urbanization and Land use on Climate”. Nature. 423 (29 May 2003): 528-31.
Malakoff, David. “Global Warming is Not a Crisis.” 22 March 2007. Online sound. NPR. 31 October 2007.
“Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion”. 30 October 2007. Link.
Parker, David E. “Large-scale warming is not urban”. Nature. 432 (2004): 290
“Separating Fact from Fiction in Crichton’s ‘State of Fear‘.” 30 October 2007. Link.
Solanki, Sami K. “Solar Variability and Climate Change.” Astronomy and Geophysics 43 (2002): 5.9-5:13.
“The Case for Skepticism on Global Warming.” 20 October 2007. Link.
Looks like Alberto Gonzales is resigning, effective September 17. He hasn’t given a reason, nor has a replacement been chosen.
I’m sure you all remember his testimony to congress about the firing of all those district attorneys, when he had to choose between coming clean about it or lying; thus exposing his incompetence. Or maybe you don’t recall. Gonzales sure didn’t. His official testimony contained over 70 variants of “the dog ate my homework”. For old time’s sake, here’s a video.
A Texas megachurch has backed out of providing a service for a deceased Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because he was gay.
It’s okay though. Their justification for doing this has me convinced that it was the right thing to do.
We did decline to host the service — not based on hatred, not based on discrimination, but based on principle.
Right. Based on their principle of…hating and discriminating gays?
Most Christians like to believe their faith conveys the virtues of love and understanding more effectively than any other. What the church should have done was have the memorial service in spite of the man being gay, on principle. What a statement that would have made. Imagine if the pastor would have instead said this:
We are choosing to host the service — not based on tradition, not based on conventionality, but based on the Christian principle of “love thy neighbor”.
“It’s not that we didn’t love the family”, he continues. Tough love I guess. The man isn’t even alive to feel the hatred. His family, however, is. They have done nothing wrong. By mere accident of birth, they happen to belong to the same family as a gay man. They can feel the hatred after this church metaphorically kicked them in the balls.
I’m curious to know why the church thinks this is not discrimination.
Are primates really that closely related to us? I have had people tell me that it is demeaning to even consider the idea that we are related to any animal. Myself being an animal, I have no problem believing we came from a different animal. But how different are we from primates, really? Is it that much of a stretch to see the resemblances in our phenotypes, genotypes, and culture? (Yes, primates do have culture.)
I hadn’t thought about this much recently until I read an article on the Guardian detailing a primate closely related to chimpanzees found only in the Congo. Time also wrote about this in 2005. Initially all that was known about these animals was known through the locals describing “lion killers”. There isn’t much evidence for the primates killing large cats from what I can tell. From the evidence, the idea stops at legend.
There is another species of chimp living in the same area commonly known as Bonobo. The term is used to describe a type of “pygmy chimpanzee”, although they are not noticeably smaller than a normal chimp. The scientific term for the species is Pan paniscus. The species shares a common ancestor with the other chimps, Pan troglodytes. This common ancestor, then, shares a common ancestor with modern humans. This means that humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than chimpanzees are to gorillas.
I thought I should clear that up, because when I begin writing about some of the traits this species has, it would be easy to think that this species was more closely related to humans than the other species of chimpanzees, and this is simply not the case. To the left, you can see the phylogenic tree for primates. If you are wondering how we are able to map this tree, please read this.
The Bonobo were discovered in 1928 by American anatomist Harold Coolidge. The find was represented only by a skull, and was at first mistaken for an juvenile chimpanzee. We now know that they are a separate species.
There are a number of things that distinguish this species from the rest of its primate cousins. The Bonobo have a gait that is commonly upright in situations where they need to carry things, such as food or nest-building material. They seem to have much less problems accomplishing this than the other chimpanzees. They are able to walk upright about 25% of the time.
What got me interested, though is not what makes them different from other primates, but what makes them similar to us. It is not only the Bonobo and other chimps that share suprisingly similar characteristics with humans, but most of the closelt related primates do. If you’d like to read more about the similarities, see this page. It is very interesting to see that things we would normally consider human–maternal bonds, depression, guilt, shame, love–are not unique in humans at all. Even their sexual behavior is astonishingly similar.
I’d like to direct your attention to a talk that I watched on TED a while ago. Taken directly from the description:
Savage-Rumbaugh asks whether uniquely human traits, and other animals’ behaviors, are hardwired by species. Then she rolls a video that makes you think: maybe not. The bonobo apes she works with understand spoken English. One follows her instructions to take a cigarette lighter from her pocket and use it to start a fire. Bonobos are shown making tools, drawing symbols to communicate, and playing Pac-Man — all tasks learned just by watching. Maybe it’s not always biology that causes a species to act as it does, she suggests. Maybe it’s cultural exposure to how things are done.
Are primates really that closely related to us? I have had people tell me that it is demeaning to even consider the idea that we are related to any animal. Myself being an animal, I have no problem believing we came from a different animal. But how different are we from primates, really? Is it that much of a stretch to see the resemblances in our phenotypes, genotypes, and culture? (Yes, primates do have culture.)
I thought I should clear that up, because when I begin writing about some of the traits this species has, it would be easy to think that this species was more closely related to humans than the other species of chimpanzees, and this is simply not the case. To the left, you can see the phylogenic tree for primates. If you are wondering how we are able to map this tree, please read