Premise 2: Theodicy is morally objectionable

The defence of this premise has largely been made already, since it relies entirely upon the criticisms proposed by the moral anti-theodicists. If their criticisms are correct, then theodicy, even implicit theodicy, is morally objectionable. To deny the evaluative claims made within the second or third propositions of the problem of evil is to make evaluative claims that are morally unthinkable. These unthinkable evaluative claims ought not to be made, and to make them is morally objectionable.

My argument states that, to the extent that theodicy is morally objectionable, theism necessarily inherits that moral objectionability. To be clear, and to reiterate something that I

4 For an outline, see Trent Dougherty, ‘Skeptical Theism’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2014, available at: <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skeptical-theism/> [accessed 09/09/2014].

mentioned earlier (albeit in a footnote; see note 2 of this chapter), all I mean by that is that one can, and has good reason to, object to theism on moral grounds. The phrase ‘morally objectionable’ has connotations though, connotations of ‘morally distasteful’, ‘wrong’, ‘bad’, or ‘evil’. I do not intend to make those connotations; ‘morally objectionable’ is here meant to only mean ‘capable of being objected to morally, and there is good reason to so object’. So, to reduce the rhetorical connotations a little, rather than saying ‘theism is morally objectionable’, we ought probably to say ‘theism commits one to making certain evaluative claims, claims that we have good moral reason to disagree with’. But that is a clumsy phrase.

And besides, we might have reason not to shrink away from making the bolder claim that theism is ‘morally objectionable’, in the sense that it is ‘wrong’, ‘bad’, or ‘evil’.

7.3.1 Morally objectionable, i n a strong sense and in a weak sense

In general, when someone makes evaluative claims about something of sufficient moral importance, claims that contrast with your own, we find their claims morally objectionable in the stronger sense; we find those claims to be wrong, morally, and the person who makes those claims is judged to be a bad person in light of them. Consider something like slavery: If someone makes the claim that ‘slavery is good’, or even ‘slavery is not bad’, we are naturally inclined to see them as a bad person. There is nothing wrong with this picture; but this is not to say that all cases of contrasting evaluative claims warrant a judgement that the other person is a bad person. Consider something like vegetarianism: A vegetarian might be a vegetarian for moral reasons, thus meaning that they hold evaluative claims (e.g. ‘eating meat is wrong’) that contrast with meat eaters (‘eating meat is not wrong’). But there are many liberal vegetarians who do not see all meat eaters around them as being bad people for that difference in evaluative opinion. Some more extreme or committed vegetarians might, but not all. Whereas, I would say, all reasonable people would judge any supporter of slavery to be a bad person.

These are the two senses of ‘morally objectionable’: The liberal vegetarian considers meat eaters to be ‘morally objectionable’ in the weaker sense, in that the meat eaters’ views are capable of being objected to morally and they consider that there is good reason to so object, but not in the stronger sense of necessarily seeing meat eaters as bad people for all that. The slavery example illustrates the second, stronger sense: Someone who believes that

‘slavery is good’ is morally objectionable in both the weaker sense and the stronger sense.

Not only are their views capable of being objected to morally, and we have good reason to so

object, but their views are also conducive to seeing them as a bad person. The difference between the two senses seems to be a matter of ascertaining the moral weight of the issue.

Some things we are not so concerned about as to go around judging everyone who disagrees with us as terrible people. For some other things we will tolerate no dissent. Vegetarianism seems to belong to the former, slavery the latter. In the context of my thesis, where should theism belong?

Deciding at what point something becomes of sufficient moral weight such that to hold contrasting evaluative judgements entails a moral objection is a profoundly grey area.

Fortunately, our task is rendered a little more simple in this instance in that theodicy, in its very nature, extends to all morally relevant cases, up to and including the most severe cases.

The conclusion of theodicy is that no evil is to be considered unjustifiable or unconscionable.

We are therefore free to push ourselves to the most extreme of examples, and engage with theodicy on these cases alone. It ought to be clear by now that to deny the evaluative claim that the holocaust, say, was an instance (or perhaps better understood as a collection of instances) of unconscionable evil is probably to make a claim that is morally objectionable in the stronger sense. Theodicy, even implicit theodicy, makes this claim. As Michael Levine says, ‘what [theodicists] have done is to offer not just a prima facie, but an ultimate justification for the holocaust and other horrors.’⁵ Therefore, theodicy is probably morally objectionable in the strong sense, and if theism inherits the extent to which theodicy is morally objectionable, then theism is probably morally objectionable in the strong sense too.

That theodicy (or, derivatively, theism) is probably morally objectionable in the strong sense does not in itself recommend any specific action or attitude regarding it; we are free to adopt a liberal attitude of live and let live, and refrain from presenting our moral condemnation to any theist that we happen to meet. And there are many complex philosophical issues regarding separating views such as ‘slavery is good’ from ‘slavery is justified’, or ‘for all I know slavery is justified’, etc. Theodicy does not intend to say that the holocaust was good, after all; the most it could be accused of would be offering a contention that it was justified. And so it remains an open question whether or not we would, analogously, consider someone who considered slavery to be justified to be a bad person. But given that theodicy presides over all instances that have ever or will ever occur, including

5 Michael P. Levine, ‘Contemporary Christian Analytic Philosophy of Religion: Biblical Fundamentalism, Terrible Solutions to a Horrible Problem, and Hearing God’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 48:2 (2000), 89-119 (p. 107).

slavery, then whatever decision we come to regarding these issues will transfer directly to the theodicist, and so (at least implicitly) to the theist.

I leave the reader to make their own evaluative judgements here. The point of this thesis is to identify the string of entailments that leads a theist, necessarily, to the tacit sanctioning of the evils of the world. Included in that sanctioning is the evaluative statement:

‘From a God’s-eye view, x was/is justified’, where x equals absolutely anything horrible that ever has or will occur. Slavery is just one horror in a very long list. I only lay claim to the statement that theism is therefore morally objectionable in the weaker sense, in that it is capable of being objected to on moral grounds, and that we have good reason to so object.

The question of whether it is also objectionable in the stronger sense will be left unanswered, but it certainly seems at least prima facie reasonable to suppose that theism might be morally objectionable in the strong sense on the basis of this argument.