Ep. #88 – Why does God allow evil such as COVID-19? w/ Dr. Rasmussen
Summary
What is the logical problem of evil? How should we think about particular, horrendous evils? Do they provide evidence against God’s existence? What about natural evils like COVID-19 and animal suffering? In this episode, Dr. Josh Rasmussen joins us to talk through a whole host of philosophical considerations when it comes to the problem of evil and suffering.
Guest Bio
Dr. Josh Rasmussen, an associate professor of philosophy at Azusa Pacific University. His area of expertise is analytic metaphysics, with a focus on the foundations of existence and the philosophy of mind. He is the author of Defending the Correspondence Theory of Truth (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Necessary Existence (with Pruss; Oxford University Press, 2015), and How Reason Can Lead to God (IVP, 2019), and the recent Is God The Best Explanation of Things: A Dialogue with Felipe Leon.
Resources Mentioned
How Reason Can Lead to God: A Philosopher’s Bridge to Faith by Dr. Josh Rasmussen
A Randomness-Based Theodicy for Evolutionary Evils by Jordan Wessling and Josh Rasmussen
Related Episodes
Ep. #51 – How to Discuss Worldview Issues w/ Dr. Rasmussen (part 1)
Ep. #52 – Reality Has an Ultimate Foundation w/ Dr. Rasmussen (part 2)
Ep. #53 – Exploring the Ultimate Foundation w/ Dr. Rasmussen (part 3)
Appendix: A Brief Response to Large-scale Natural evils by Dr. Josh Rasmussen
Consider the Great Story hypothesis. On this hypothesis, everyone is a hero in a great, true story. This story has many episodes (death is a change of scene), many characters, and plots inside plots. Everything evolves along lines of purpose (some seen, some not yet).
The Great Story hypothesis predicts plot-sized challenges on many scales: individual, family, city, nation, world. Plot-sized challenges contribute to a story *at their scale*. Thus, instead of a black hole that instantly destroys everyone before they can think, plot sized challenges draw out courage, compassion, perspective-taking (breaking down tribalism), hero-displaying, and hero-making, etc. By this light, a challenge like a worldwide virus is not entirely unexpected on the Great Story hypothesis. This challenge focuses our attention on a common enemy. In the soil of danger, heroes emerge. Love grows. People learn to cooperate in the unfolding of plots inside plots. Everyone has a great purpose – a role to play: problems ignite purposes.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that God directly causes all the problems. It’s rather that God may allow problems — including large-scale problems — in light of greater goods in a greater, everlasting story.
Interestingly, it is arguably vastly more perplexing (unexpected) that any characters in any stories would (let alone could) emerge if fundamental reality were entirely mindless. The mere mindless matter hypothesis doesn’t of itself predict that any conscious agents will emerge. The thought here is that evil or this sort and scale is unexpected, not on the Great Story, but on mindless materialism — which predicts no great story. In other words, worldwide problems are expected if we are part of a Great Story, whereas if ultimate reality is mindless, it is unexpected that any characters in any stories would ever arise. By this analysis, worldwide problems point to the greater purpose of all our lives.
Hey! Thanks for a great episode. I have a question/looking for more information.
I understand that this world is imperfect, but I worry about using the “Fall” too eagerly as an answer. We know from science/history that natural forces that cause physical evils, even things like viruses, were built into creation. So I think the bigger question is: can physical laws somehow be different where there are no biological or natural evils in the New Creation? And if so, why not just have this kind of creation from the beginning?
Hi Patric,
Good questions! A few ideas in response:
Re: I understand that this world is imperfect, but I worry about using the “Fall” too eagerly as an answer. We know from science/history that natural forces that cause physical evils, even things like viruses, were built into creation.
The idea of invoking the Fall is that human beings we supernaturally protected, in the Garden of Eden from any physical evils like viruses, tornadoes, and such that could kill them. The claim is not that there was none of that stuff going on outside of the Garden.
Re: So I think the bigger question is: can physical laws somehow be different where there are no biological or natural evils in the New Creation?
If the laws really were that different, the whole world would be very different in ways that are hard for us to fully get our minds around. Nonetheless, to answer your questions directly, yes, that is possible.
Re: And if so, why not just have this kind of creation from the beginning?
This is what we might call the “Why Not Heaven Now?” objection or “Why not just Heaven?” It’s a good question, and I deal with it in the pdf of talking points I wrote on the Problem of Evil that you can check out here: http://www.classicaltheism.com/talkingpoints
Also, Capturing Christianity has a video response to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOmOLre6CyM&t=212s
Also, we touch on this objection in the following episodes on the problem of evil: http://www.classicaltheism.com/oneill and http://www.classicaltheism.com/evildialogue
I hope that’s a helpful start!