[00:00:04] Speaker A: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Why would an intelligent designer of the universe allow so much suffering? And is human evil most consistent with naturalism or theism? Welcome to ID the future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. It today. I'm speaking with Dr. Eric Hadeen, professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Ball State University in Indiana. In 2013, his Boundaries of Science course at Ball State University came under attack by a national atheist organization for allowing student discussions in class to consider evidence that nature is not all there is and that our lives might have eternal meaning and value within a universe specifically fitted for beings like us. Dr. Hadeen is author of the recent book Canceled Science what Some Atheists Don't Want You to See. He speaks regularly at universities around the country and writes on the evidence for intelligent
[email protected]. Dr Hadeen. Welcome to Ivy. The future.
[00:01:09] Speaker C: Thank you so much, Andrew. It's great to be here with you today.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: You've written a couple of
[email protected] recently that are very insightful, I thought, and timely in light of current events going on in the world right now. And though this topic is evergreen because there are many examples of human evil throughout all of recorded history, we're all wrestling right now with the effects of the worst attack on the people of Israel since the Holocaust. Your first article is titled thoughts of Evil in a Designed World. And the follow up to that is nature reflects an intelligent design, but also a moral one. In this episode, we'll unpack your first article about the two causes of suffering and what that suffering means in a design world versus a world that occurred through natural mechanisms. And in a second episode, we'll discuss your argument that nature reflects not only intelligent design, but also moral design. Now, you start out your post on suffering by saying this, not least at a time like this in the world. Perhaps the most widely voiced objection against intelligent design is, why would a designer or god allow so much suffering? You go on to say that causes of suffering appear to stem from two different sources natural evil and human evil. Can you define natural evil for us?
[00:02:30] Speaker C: Well, it's a good place to start, perhaps a little less personal than some of the other causes or forms of evil. But for example, we describe natural disasters, such as what happens when a hurricane makes landfall in a populated area, or a tornado goes through a mobile home park or even a landslide or a wildfire, something like that, and people their property get hurt. And so at that kind of intersection between what nature is doing and how it affects humans, we interpret what nature is doing as evil. Now, if it was just something that happened in a place on planet Earth and it didn't affect anybody, we would probably just not really consider it as evil. So people have said that the laws of nature, the forces of nature, are impersonal. In a way, I agree with that. But I think the question comes up in the context of why would God allow evil? We would ascribe the origin of natural forces to God. So when they potentially cause harm to people, we ultimately perhaps trace it back to God and maybe want to lay the blame at his doorstep.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Okay. So as humans, we tend to blame something, and it's good to know what we're blaming and why, basically, is what you're saying.
[00:04:02] Speaker C: Well, yes. I think that there's a tendency within us, especially in times of pain, to try to look for a cause, a reason who's responsible.
And looking at natural disasters, though, I did just a little bit of research on this when I was writing the article.
It turns out that actually, the percentage of all human deaths that are attributable to natural disasters has been decreasing over the last century quite significantly in the last ten years. Maybe only 0.1% of human deaths are due to natural disasters. And the article I was reading made the point clear that this is not due to fewer or less intense natural disasters over the last century, but simply that society as a whole in different countries, is getting better at protecting people, getting better at providing assistance and follow up and so on to help mitigate the negative effects of those disasters.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. And you also observe that the populations most affected by natural disasters are not evenly distributed. There's a disparity there. What would the disparity show? What would that suggest or hint at?
[00:05:28] Speaker C: So the disparity in the, I guess, demographic of the population that is most affected, it shows up that those who are economically challenged, poorer populations, tend to suffer more loss. And this can come about from various factors.
If, say, the building structures that are inhabited by poorer people or perhaps in nations where there is not as much economic development if the building structures are not as robust or able to tolerate, say, earthquakes, then there may be a greater loss of human life when an earthquake hits that area as compared to, say, a more modern, economically prosperous country where there's the resources available to build structures with earthquake protection built in or maybe even to choose a location that is not so prone to effects of natural disasters in some degree.
Already we're beginning to see that the suffering caused by what we would call natural forces has something to do with our choices as well. If we're willing to spend the money to do things right or to take precautions to protect ourselves with better building materials, better building designs, or even where we build things, then there will be perhaps fewer deaths as a result.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Now, your educational background is physics and astronomy. Let's pretend we have the ability to adjust the laws of nature and tweak specifically, say, the law of gravity just a little bit just so that less people fall on the ground and scrape their knees or worse, maybe it will stop landslides. What's the problem with this? Could we get away with that?
[00:07:33] Speaker C: Well, probably not.
And the reason is that many of the, I guess, strengths of the different forces of nature are known to be very finely tuned. For example, the force of gravity affects not just us locally in how much it hurts when we fall off our bike, but it is a universal force that is the main shaper of the entire universe. The structure of galaxies, the formation of stars and planets is all governed by the force of gravity. And even from the beginning of the universe with the Big Bang, the rate of expansion of matter as a result of the Big Bang is affected by the force of gravity. And scientists have determined that if it was changed by just a small amount, either the rate of expansion would be too great and matter would spread out too quickly, and then this would happen. If gravity was not as strong as it is now, the expansion rate would kind of be greater, matter would spread out too much, and stars would not be able to clump together by gravity. We wouldn't even have planets and stars. And if gravity was greater, then the expansion rate would be slower and gravitational attraction would be more effective. And basically you would end up with a mess of black holes that's not conducive to life either. So many other of the laws of nature also are finely tuned and just trying to change them to suit our needs or to imagine that we're going to fix a problem locally tends to have consequences that can be universal and are almost always disadvantageous to life.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Right? So not advisable that we take matters into our own hands there. Well, what about sickness that's also considered a natural evil? Are bodily afflictions more reasonably reconciled with the notion of a purely naturalistic universe or one from an intelligent designer?
[00:09:46] Speaker C: Well, this is again a deep question. I don't know that we can settle it entirely. But sickness, when it hits home or when it happens to us, feels more personal even it's afflicting us even though there might be somebody in our same family who's not suffering. And so it can seem, in a way, unfair. Again, if you think about complaining, say that if there's a God, he wouldn't allow sickness and so on. And so there must not be a God because there's sickness. That argument really doesn't hold water. Ultimately, we have to start with more basic fundamentals and explain how we got to be a living being in the first place and looking at the biochemical complexity of the human body within each cell. But then many of the physiological systems of our bodies show layers upon layers of essentially engineering and fine tuning design that allow us to live at all and so I think that we need to take a step back and be impressed that we're alive at all.
It's a very complex system, our bodies. And any complex system can break down because we do live in a world where the second law of thermodynamics applies to not just stars and mountainsides and physical systems but also to our own bodies which are made up of physical elements as well. So when our car ages a bit, it gets rusty and things don't work as well. Honestly, some of that could be true of our bodies as well. So I don't think that sickness is inconsistent with design. Just like if your car's headlight goes out, that's not inconsistent with the fact that the car was designed. Now, you could also say that, say, cancer is a mutation of the way things were designed to be and evolution sort of predicts that mutations will happen.
To look at cancer and blame God in a way we could look at cancer and say it's part of a natural process of mutation and things are breaking down. So it's, again, not a complaint against design. I think, and it is unfortunate I'm not trying to explain away the suffering that comes with sickness. And I know personally and in my own family there's examples of sickness and it's not easy. And anyone who's dealt with it knows that to be true. But I don't find that there is a cause within the suffering of sickness to suggest that either God doesn't exist or that he doesn't care.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Well, what about human evil? You write that human evil stems from choices that humans are free to make. But if we are all just the result of natural forces primarily the electromagnetic attraction between charged particles then how can evil or good have any meaning outside of our opinions? What would you say to that?
[00:13:16] Speaker C: Well, I don't believe that it's a rationally, defensible position to suggest that our choices are purely predetermined by, say, the interaction between atoms in our bodies or our minds or within our brains. And so human evil, if we are purely a naturalistic outcome then everything about us is based on the results of the laws of nature. There is nothing else in the naturalistic worldview. There's only forces between particles. And as a physicist, there's only a few of those. There's gravitational force, which is irrelevant for chemistry. There's then the electromagnetic force, which is the dominant natural force for any sort of biochemistry and then there's a nuclear force. But that just sort of establishes the particular elements that make up our bodies. So that's it. And if we are nothing more than interactions and if those interactions are, in a sense, left on their own without any I'm almost begging the question here without any intelligent manipulation then there can't be any such thing as evil because how can a rock be evil or how can gravity be evil versus good? I mean, it is even a meaningless concept to discuss morality. And in essence, it would be difficult even to defend rational thought.
How can we even have a meaningful discussion if all of our thoughts are simply the results of interactions between electrons? And there's nothing more going on than that. So in a way, I would say that human evil based on our choices as well as human good, if we could branch into that. But that that is consistent not with naturalism or materialism, but it's consistent with theism that our beings have more to them than just the interactions between the matter that makes us up that we have a spiritual component, something that is transcendent to the physical and that that allows us to have rational thought. It allows us to have a moral basis to make judgments, to discern good and evil. These aren't just illusions. So again, I think that when considering human evil, the very concept is inconsistent with naturalism. And so actually, in a way provides a pillar of kind of argument in favor of theism yeah, well, and people.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Are still making the claim of determinism in science. Just today, I saw a news report about Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky. And he concluding, after 40 years of study that, quote virtually all human behavior is as far beyond our conscious control as the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells, or the beating of our hearts. End quote. So in other words, Sapolsky is claiming we don't have free will and he's not the only one out there that's suggesting this. Now, that conclusion seems to fit with an evolutionary account of human origins. But is it aligned with the evidence that we're seeing?
[00:16:58] Speaker C: Well, I think that broadly speaking, his viewpoint is not very popular. I read his article, and I think that he is forgetting something. He makes a point of saying that our choices are merely determined by influences. Not just environmental influences around us, but internal influences, physiological, even mental. But that's not to deny that we are influenced in our choices by a number of things.
If I'm getting hungry, I may choose to do something and that's just a result of a physiological stimulus. Or if I'm cold because the windows open and it's winter outside, that may influence me in a different choice. Certainly we are influenced. But what Sapolsky seems to have suppressed is the reality that we as human beings also have rational control over our bodies, our minds, our reactions. So we're not just vulnerable or defenseless kind of collections of molecules that are completely at the whim of influences. We have rational control that we can actually will to do something which is contrary to every influence that is affecting us at the moment.
For example, I have on occasion suffered from severe migraines. And this has happened when I'm supposed to be doing something else, like going to class to give a lecture on astronomy. And every physical stimulus in my being is telling me to lie down, to close my eyes, to not move. And yet rationally, I know I am responsible to teach this class. I don't have a backup. I need to be there. And so I force myself against every input. Physiologically, that's pounding on my senses and I get myself into the classroom and hold onto the desk and manage to give a lecture. Okay, so that's a rational override. We have that. And there's many other examples you could think of where the physical input is pushing us one way, but we override that with our rational thoughts and that keeps us, in a way, morally responsible for what we do. For example, if terrorists decide that they're going to go in and attack another country, you could say, well, that's based on a lot of environmental and kind of background influences upon them. There may be that, but they also have the rational ability to override those influences if they so chose to do. Because we can determine what we do or we can decide not to do. We still have moral responsibility. And I think that that's kind of the bedrock of our justice system. It actually is an important consideration because if we are adopting the position that we are not morally responsible, then that also implies that we are not rational and it therefore implies that we're not human. And so we therefore cease to have any rights.
And that's a scary would be a very unfortunate world to kind of tip into if this viewpoint that we have no free choice is accepted. And I think that it would not only be wrong to accept it, it would be against evidence.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah, well, those are some good points. Now sometimes when we see evil acts being committed, we'll say, oh, look at those animals and describe people as animals. But in your article you write, nowhere in the animal world do we see evil that comes anywhere close to comparing with the unfortunate depths of evil displayed by humanity throughout our recorded history. So is that difference between human evil and animal behavior surprising?
[00:21:47] Speaker C: Well, I think it depends upon which worldview one is approaching the question with.
If we, for example, consider first a naturalistic evolutionary worldview where humans are just kind of a little bit of an evolutionary step away from animals. And in fact, that means that we're still animals, but we're just somehow more successful in the evolutionary paradigm, then we wouldn't expect a categorical difference between our behavior and animal behavior. If you think about the animal world, sure, one animal might kill another animal. There's usually reasons for that, fighting over food or a mate or territory. But you just don't see anything like a war going on in the animal world where one group of animals decides to expand their kingdom and destroy all the other animals or subjugate them in some way. And even on a simpler level, I remember some years ago, we lived in a neighborhood where there were some feral cats and there was another cat that had, I think, three kittens or more, but three of them grew up and hung around our house and we eventually began to give them some food outside the back door. And the mother cat was the dominant one. She was a survivor. She was a feral cat.
She would push even her offspring out of the way from the food bowl and eat the food herself first. And we could think, oh, that was mean, but it was a survival technique. But what I noted was that she did not try to hoard all the food. We had several bowls out and she didn't try to somehow make sure that nobody got any food yet. This sort of thing happens within human society when it goes wrong. There are times when some people will say, I'm going to have all the food and no one else is going to have any, or else they're only going to get it if they pay me some exorbitant price, some sort of an extortion setup. So animal evil, I think, is limited to just sort of opportunistic what seems to work in the moment. But human evil sometimes spreads unfortunately to such at a national level, and sometimes it doesn't seem to even make sense. And so I think there's a disconnect between categorically when we look at human evil and animal evil. And so I believe that actually fits better with more the theistic viewpoint that humans are not animals. Humans are a different class of being. We have the potential for more good. We have the potential for more evil. So those are just some thoughts on that particular comparison.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, as we wrap this up, this first episode, in your estimation, is theism a better explanation for the origin and spread of human evil in the world?
[00:25:11] Speaker C: Well, I think that human evil is consistent with the theistic viewpoint that is at least within the Judeo Christian worldview, where, again, humans are not just animals, but have a consciousness and awareness that we might call a spiritual side, a spiritual nature. And as such, that I believe, as I just mentioned, gives us the capability of expressing greater kind of altruism, benevolence, compassion on the good side and also evil at a scale that's completely absent from the animal world. And of course, the biblical viewpoint speaks about why. Why is there human evil and ultimately traces it back to a human choice, in a sense, a decision to serve self rather than the one who created him. So there's much more to be said about this. I don't want to paint just a pessimistic picture and say it's just all bad. Again, from the biblical viewpoint, our designer has stepped in to provide a solution to this problem, but that's probably to talk about the details of that. Something for another episode, perhaps?
[00:26:42] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it is time to close this episode, but we'll follow up with a second episode where we'll discuss your accompanying
[email protected]. Nature reflects an intelligent design, but also a moral one. Dr. Hadeen, thank you for your time today.
[00:26:58] Speaker C: You're very welcome. Thank you for the conversation.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: We'll include links to these articles in this episode's
[email protected] and for more of Dr. Hadeen, get a copy of his book Canceled Science what some Atheists Don't Want you to See. For Idthefuture, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for listening.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
Close.
