The problem of evil, disembodied minds, and other ponderings

"What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. Hehehehe."

-- Homer Simpson


"I absolutely believe in God. And I absolutely hate the fucker."

-- Riddick, as seen in "Pitch Black"


There is an entire branch of theology, called theodicy, dedicated to solving the problem of evil ("If God is all-powerful and good, why is there evil in the world?"). Try as they might, though, the theologians and other religious apologists cannot solve this problem, because it embodies a fundamental contradiction, an irreconcilable dichotomy between two opposing propositions. A God who is the epitome of good is the antithesis of the presence of evil.

Here is the most waffling (and amusing) "solution" to this insurmountable problem:

"God wants to test us. Life is a series of trials and challenges to gauge whether each individual will pass the test of His approval."

This seems half-way plausible - until you give it a second's thought. Then it collapses in a mangled heap of contradictions.

Firstly, in order for a test to count as a measure of merit, it has to be fair. In other words, it must be the same for everyone, and everyone must also have been given the same study material and an opportunity to study it. Is this what we see? A cursory look at the world tells us that it's the exact opposite of what we see. Through no choice of their own, every person on this planet was was born into a different set of circumstances, in some way or other. Some people were born into opulence  while others were born into brutal destitution. And there are all gradations in between. Some people have access to a world of knowledge and intellectual stimulation, others are denied means by stultifying religious or political doctrines that dictate their intellectual and cultural life. So immediately, we can see that the proposition that life is a test has to be the sheerest of rubbish, something that doesn't even rise to the level of idiocy. But for the sake of argument, I'll assume that this first stumbling block can be surmounted. The apologist might retort, "But the world is the way it is because humans made it that way. Humans are free to commit acts of evil because God gave them free will." Exactly. So how then does God justify using using the life we live on Earth - the circumstances of which are largely dictated by other humans, who made decisions in a context determined largely by the actions of previously living humans - as a test if He isn't even setting the rules Himself? Why is He allowing other humans to dictate the conditions of the classroom? The part I find most pernicious and outrageously insulting to human dignity is this: the implication that an innocent child is supposed to pass a test. Children are all too often the victims of adult stupidity, cruelty, incompetence and corruption. Millions of children are yearly born into the world, experience its trials and tribulations for but a few short years, and are then duly flushed into oblivion. The Deity must be a monster indeed if He if this mass destruction of children is part of his ''test''.

The argument that life is a test is thus not only logically doomed, it's also a thoroughly repugnant and vile doctrine.

Secondly, it makes absolutely no sense for a Good God to actually make ANYONE go through the agony of his test if he is also infinitely powerful and all-knowing. Surely, he could gauge whether someone would do something, without them needing to do it, and determine on that basis whether the person has passed the gauntlet. Apparently, however, God is a benevolent sadist (yes, such things do exist as legitimate, even praise-worthy categories in religion's schizophrenic space of ideas), since actual, rather than simulated, pain is required (surely for some mysterious reason or other) as part of his examination of our worth.

Riddick. He doesn't like God.

Thirdly, on what basis is this God actually supposed to judge people? Suppose someone is born into a well-to-do family, and that they never carry out any especially wicked acts. This person is more or less nice to other people, is kind to friends and family, performs his or her civic duties, and, to top it off, regularly attends church (or mosque or synagogue). But he/she, in spite of being given the best opportunities in life, is not as good as he or she could have been (by some reasonable criterion, say). Does this person, if we're to suppose that they are being "tested", therefore fail the test? Does this person deserve to spend the rest of ETERNITY (and try wrapping your head around that notion) in Hell? What about people who have spent their lives in war zones? Are these people expected to show the same nuances of humanity and kindness as those who had the fortune (through pure accident) of being born into safe and nurturing environments?

Fourth, even assuming that one's life is a test, why should this particular test be the gauge for whether I am "good" or "evil", against the backdrop of the other possible lives I could have lived, and which would also surely be relevant in such a calculus of virtue? Wouldn't it be fairer (though more painful, unless we go the simulation route) if God made us pass through, say, a thousand different permutations of lives and then seen how we came out on average, rather than judging us on the basis of a statistically worthless sample of one permutation? (and here I am restricting myself to those people who reached adulthood, rather than the millions of infants and children who die every year in some miserable part of God's "perfectly designed world" through absolutely no fault of their own). In science, when we want to test for an effect, we set up what are known as multiple replicates and see what happens across these replicates. Apparently, God is also a poor statistician. But then, this makes sense, given that Ronald Fisher lived well after the Bible and the Koran were written (it's always interesting to note how God is invariably afflicted with the ignorance of his human contemporaries). Unfortunately, the impulse to find excuses for God continues to this day, simply because emotional rather intellectual imperatives are being served.


God, and other logical impossibilities

When we talk about God, what are we actually talking about? Through their own admission, many religious people don't themselves have much of an idea. For example, Muslims are encouraged to believe that God is unknowable, but that humanity was bestowed with a number of "signs" of his existence (notice the masculine vernacular - which doesn't originate with me - and what this suggests about the inherent sexism of the monotheistic faiths, the examples of which are too numerous to require any elucidation). This makes no sense. If something is unknowable, then what can possibly act as a "sign" for its existence? A sign for what? It's unknowable, remember, which means that you don't know what it is. In order for something to be a sign for that other thing's existence, then we need to know what that thing is, at least in approximate form. Otherwise, what the hell are we talking about? It should pass without comment - if we haven't lost our senses - that this provides a pretty lame basis for human morality.

For the remainder of this rant, I'll limit myself to the personal God that most religious people believe in. Many people will object to critiques of God like that given in Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (in spite of much vitriol about Dawkins being a "fundamentalist" in his own right, the book lays to rest most of the arguments for religion). They charge that Dawkins is attacking a caricature of their deity. "That's not my God. You're attacking an outdated 'man in the sky' image which no one subscribes to nowadays." Are these critics right? Nope. I love you guys, but you're talking pure horseshit - and some part of you knows it. What Dawkins actually attacks is the entity (or class of entities) that is widely believed to have the following attributes: it bestows moral maxims; it judges people; it feels anger at our indiscretions; it wreaks miracles; it listens to prayers. These are all attributes of a volitional, conscious entity - that is, a personal being. What other type of "God" would be worthy of the name? We often hear appeals to something like "The universe is God", or "God is energy". These are nothing more than an exercises in word-play. If the universe is God (or vice-versa; what's the difference?), then I suppose I could be a believer. But not one jot of understanding is added by simply labelling the universe, or energy, as God. Furthermore, it's disingenuous. By energy, scientists mean something precise: a quantity that can neither be destroyed nor created, but which is conserved and is interchangeable with mass-matter. By God, people mean an immaterial entity with a plan for humanity. Does "energy" have a plan for humanity? If not, then this abuse of the English language should cease. We are talking about two fundamentally different propositions that have nothing at all to do with each other. You're free to describe this being or entity or whatever you think it is, but don't, please, call it "energy". The vague notion of God as "energy" or "oneness" is useful, however, because it allows the believer to retreat to safety when the personal God they actually pray to and worship is refuted. When the need to impress the atheist has subsided, it's straight back to the judgmental, human-centric God that Dawkins actually talks about (rather than the God of the theologians that hardly anyone pays any attention to, including most of the believers).

Ain't so tough.

So a personal God it is, then. A non-personal God is exactly the same thing as the physical universe.

While all of physics, biology, chemistry, geology and astronomy have shown absolutely no "sign" whatsoever of God's existence, it might still have been plausible to suppose that God, in spite of His conspicuous absence, existed. This was until cognitive psychology came onto the scene, which showed that there cannot be such things as disembodied, immaterial minds. Minds are inherently tied to the physical medium in which they are, well, tied. When you feel drowsy from lack of sleep, that isn't because your "soul" is getting tired. It's because the synapses in your brain are being starved of some transmitter, or some such thing. When you "lose your mind" through dementia, the "soul" doesn't stay sane (incidentally, things like dementia make the case for a soul even more difficult to entertain, because they messes with free will, and if someone doesn't have free will, they aren't morally responsible for what they do, and can't be judged as deserving of punishment or reward). Your consciousness is determined by physical events happening in the physical universe. The mind is a dynamical set of interrelationships and representations about the world - a place which also happens to be physical. The mind requires an apparatus to transfer stimuli from the sense organs (also physical) into the brain (also physical). We have here a system that is entirely physical, and yet many would believe that the mind - which is produced by physical processes, evolved by physical processes, and is comprised of representations OF physical processes and things - can exist outside the physical universe, in some "realm" independent of matter. This is when they're not trying to equivocate God with "energy", which, in the scientific formulation, is interchangeable with mass-matter, and is hence part of a physical system, making a mockery of the claim that God is independent of the physical universe. If God isn't independent of the physical universe, then why not just stop at the universe instead of trying to explain its existence through something "outside" of it? It's of course never explained why this "other" thing is exempt from requiring an explanation. But if this consciousness in the void doesn't require an explanation, why should the physical universe require one? If a primordial cognitive complexity is a natural feature of existence in the form of God, why can't physical simplicity also be a natural feature of existence in the form of the universe?

Very thoughtful.

How, then, is God supposed to be a "mind" that precedes the physical universe if that mind had nothing to think about? Mind and consciousness, by the way, also require a temporal component. They require that thoughts be processed (that's what thinking is, after all, and I don't imagine many theists would want to say that their God can't think, of all things), so they must, by definition, be part of a dynamical system; as I mentioned - a system of information transfer comprising inputs and outputs, registered states, and an evolution from one state to another. As this requires that the system be describable in temporal terms (as time is a measure of the interval between events), God, being "timeless", is thus ruled out. And if God is eventless (which is implied by his timelessness), then he can't think. Hence, not a mind. A "timeless mind" is a complete contradiction. But even supposing that such a thing were possible, why not, by the same token, suppose that the universe, in some form, was itself "eventless" and that it has always existed?

"From where did the universe originate?" The question that should immediately follow from this - "Where did the cosmic mind - God - originate?" - is somehow off-limits, because it's simply assumed that the universe had to "come from" somewhere (and yet, conveniently, God didn't need to come from somewhere, because "he was always there". But that takes us straight back to the alternative: why couldn't the universe, in some form, have always existed, and therefore not have required an origin of any sort?).

Talking about an eternal mind that just sort of hangs there in a void of nothingness makes as much logical sense as talking about circular triangles. It's not just that there isn't any evidence for God; it's not just that there is evidence against God. It's that there cannot be a God, because the very concept of such a being is inherently contradictory.

As good a candidate as any for Top Job.

Theism stands as the premier intellectual excrescence produced by Homo sapiens. It has corrupted, defiled and retarded centuries of human thought and progress. We can squander the brain that evolution gave us by grovelling to Sky Daddies (in which case, we literally might as well sacrifice goats to the eclipse. Can you see how one form of grovelling is only slightly less pathetic than the other?). Or we can use it to free ourselves from our imaginary masters and build a society with human agency as its centrepiece.