Reply to Draper on “Natural Selection and the Problem of Evil”: Predictive Power
Here is Draper’s original article.
Our author’s evidence for naturalism, “E,” is as follows:
“For a variety of biological and ecological reasons, organisms compete for survival, with some having an advantage in the struggle for survival over others; as a result, many organisms, including many sentient beings, never flourish because they die before maturity, many others barely survive, but languish for most or all of their lives, and those that reach maturity and flourish for much of their lives usually languish in old age; in the case of human beings and some nonhuman animals as well, languishing often involves intense or prolonged suffering.”
This statement is unimpeachable. Kudos to Draper for putting the matter in such stark terms.
Let
P(N/T) x P(E|N/T)
P(N/T|E) = -----------------
P(E)
, where N is naturalism, and T is theism (so, there are two formulas here). Draper writes that “the fact, reported by E, that countless living organisms, including sentient beings, never flourish at all and countless others flourish only briefly is extremely surprising given theism. It is not what one would expect to find in a living world created by a perfect God.” Our author’s claim, then, is that P(E|T) is low, while P(E|N) is high.
What of P(E), expectedness? Thomas Jefferson once advised someone to “murmur not at the ways of Providence.” That we find ourselves in this world/country/town/family rather than in some other, either better or worse, one is neither expected nor unexpected. We are placed here, in this particular time, with our own unique battles to fight. There are no guarantees in life, either for good or for evil. In short, there is no “background knowledge” to help us judge how surprised we are at E, when we abstract from both naturalism and theism; E is the background knowledge for all our other conclusions. So, it is extremely hard to figure out what the value of expectedness ought to be.
Let’s go back to the likelihoods. As Draper wisely notes, “almost all sentient organisms are capable of flourishing in biologically realistic circumstances. This is proven by the fact that many do flourish and by the fact that the differences between those that do flourish and those that do not are in almost all cases relatively small.” So, victory over evil is possible, and so is the imperfect happiness that can be had in this life. It is true that not everyone flourishes, but not everyone fails, either. That, I’d like to argue, is unsurprising, given either naturalism or theism.
It is unsurprising given naturalism, because humans and other animals are adapted to their environments, but the adaptation is imperfect due to constant change in other species and in the environment, which is why there always exist the unfit to be winnowed out by natural selection.
It is unsurprising given theism, because of the existence of sufficiently powerful theodicies which explain why there is suffering and why much of it seems random. Some of the proposed theodicies are (1) soul-making; (2) the value of second-order moral goods and the third-order good of free will; (3) the value of permitting extremely intense good/virtues/happiness in humans, whose price is the possibility of extremely intense evil/vices/misery; (4) the value of a world that is governed by natural laws; (5) evil as necessary for a greater good to be eventually brought about by God; (6) evil as punishment for the Original Sin. These explain why we are placed in a challenging environment, both for the body and for the soul, in which we must do good and fight evil. Draper needs to deal with these arguments somehow, yet there is not even a mention of the word “theodicy” in his paper.
But why do the good and evil things that happen to us appear so random? We can explain only in general why we are in the fight for our lives. But no particular combination of pleasures and pains, joys and sorrows can be expected. For some of those, indeed, we are responsible ourselves. Some belong to fortune or even sheer luck. Yet to whatever seemingly random trials we are to undergo, God’s grace adapts in helping us to overcome them; so, grace is the third influence on us.
Therefore, P(E|T) is quite high and in my estimation no lower that P(E|N). Look, in what other world, given theism, does Draper expect to be born? If it’s the Garden of Eden, then we already know why we are not there. If it’s heaven, then we cannot determine our own character there by way of exercising our moral and intellectual faculties nor improve. Design a better world, Paul; only then will you show that God screwed up.