Negative atheism? With theodicy (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, May 03, 2022, 15:28 (935 days ago) @ dhw

An atheist stays in his religion:

https://able2know.org/topic/569320-1

"In dark times, many people seek refuge in religion. They hold fast to their faith.

"My older son, Rex, is one of them. He’s studying for his bar mitzvah, but he doesn’t believe in God. He told me that one day, when we were taking a walk.

“'Why not?” I asked.

“'God is supposed to care about us,” Rex said. “That doesn’t seem like something you’d let happen if you cared — and could stop it.”

"This is the “problem of evil.” It’s an old philosophical question...And if you think about God (who’s supposed to be all-powerful and endlessly empathetic), the existence of evil poses a serious puzzle: Why does God let us suffer?

***

"And some say that’s why God allows evil in the world. He doesn’t care about pleasure and pain. He cares about what pleasure and pain make possible — compassion, redemption and heroic acts, like Tony mending my back. To get those goods, though, God has to give us free will. And once we have it, some of us abuse it.

***

"Some believers feel the force of these arguments, but maintain their faith nonetheless. Marilyn McCord Adams, a philosopher and Episcopal priest, doubted that we could explain the existence of evil. But that didn’t bother her. A 2-year-old child, she explained, might not understand why his mother would permit him to have painful surgery. Nevertheless, he could be convinced of his mother’s love by her “intimate care and presence” through the painful experience.

"For those who feel the presence of God or have faith that they will feel it later, I think Ms. Adams’s attitude makes some sense. But if I’m honest, it sounds too optimistic to me.

***

"But when Rex was 4, he reframed my view of religion. One night, I was cooking dinner, and he asked, “Is God real?”

“'What do you think?” I asked.

“'I think that for real God is pretend and for pretend God is real,” Rex announced.

"I was stunned. That’s a big thought for a 4-year-old. It’s a big thought for a 40-year-old. I asked Rex to explain what he meant.

“'God isn’t real,” he said. “But when we pretend, he is.”

"Philosophers have a name for this sort of view. They call it “fictionalism.” Suppose I say, “Dumbledore teaches at Hogwarts.” If that was a claim about this world, it would be false. But they do exist in a different world — the fictional world that Harry Potter lives in. The sentence “Dumbledore teaches at Hogwarts” is true in that fiction.

"At the new synagogue, we sing a lot of the same songs and say a lot of the same prayers. But we say many more of them in English. And I find that almost intolerable. It turns out, I like my religion inscrutable.

"I just don’t believe the stories that we tell.

"Still, I pretend. And I don’t plan to stop. Because pretending makes the world a better place. I learned that from my kids too — Rex and his younger brother, Hank.

"Pretending blurs the boundaries between this world and the ones we imagine. It breathes life into stories, letting them shape the world we live in. Just think of the delight kids take in Santa Claus, even those who know, deep down, that he’s not real. Or the way they lose themselves in play. Pretending makes the world more magical and meaningful. And it’s not just for kids.

"When it feels like the world is falling apart, I seek refuge in religious rituals — but not because I believe my prayers will be answered. The prayers we say in synagogue remind me that evil has always been with us but that people persevere, survive and even thrive. I take my kids so that they feel connected to that tradition, so that they know the world has been falling apart from the start — and that there’s beauty in trying to put it back together.

"Soon, Rex will stand before our congregation and pray to a God he can’t quite believe in. It will be a magical morning, and for that moment, at least, we’ll transcend the troubles of the world."

"Scott Hershovitz (@shershovitz) is a professor of law and a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy With My Kids,” from which this essay is adapted."

Comment: dhw is wiser. Hershovitz should be agnostic if he recognized design