Suppose God exists. What do I mean by ‘God’? Roughly, a being that is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and perfectly loving/just. What would be an implication of God’s existence for how we lived our day-to-day lives?
There are no doubt many implications, but it is worthwhile focusing on a specific implication: perhaps God’s existence would induce moral paralysis in humans. Why? For the very simple reason that God is perfectly loving and just. So we should expect that God would prevent those happenings in the world that aren’t loving and just. God wouldn’t God something like that to happen given His loving and just nature. It would thus stand to reason that, if God existed, then He would have good reasons to allow apparently bad and unjust events to happen. For example, by granting humans the enormously valuable ability to freely choose (free-will), God will thereby have granted us the opportunity to choose evil for the simple reason that freedom of the will (some of great value) cannot be had without someone misusing their free will.
And the same, allegedly, can be said for bad and unjust events that take place within a universe where God exists: He is morally permitted in allowing bad and unjust events to occur only if there are compensating benefits to those events, and those benefits could not have been had without the bad or unjust event happening. For example, we couldn’t freely mistreat others without freedom of choice.
This line of reasoning has an interesting implication: it looks as though, if God exists, we would lack a moral reason to prevent suffering and unjust events. After all, if they happened, then it must be that God allowed them to happen; He must have had a solid (and compensating) moral reason to allow them to bad and unjust events to happen, otherwise he would have prevented those events from happening given His nature is perfectly loving and just. So if God has good reasons for allowing bad events to happen in the world, then presumably we lack moral reasons to prevent bad events from happening ever. Consider the following argument:
Take any event, E, that is either bad or unjust: either God had a moral reason to prevent E, or He doesn’t.
If God had a moral reason to prevent E, then E wouldn’t have happened.
If God lacks a moral reason to prevent E, then there is no moral reasons to prevent E.
Therefore:
Either E didn’t happen, or we have no moral reason to prevent E from happening.
Should we find this argument convincing? Perhaps not.
Consider that premise (3) assumes that either E isn’t bad, or that there are goods that compensate whoever is the victim of E, God either had good reason to stop E, or He had good (compensating) moral reason to allow E to happen. However, this claim appears to conflict with an intuitive principle that should guide our actions:
(PIP) All else being equal, if an act A is seriously immoral, then one has a moral obligation to prevent A.
So although the argument that God’s existence would produce moral paralysis looks compelling, the PIP principle looks compelling too. And so, whether one thinks that God’s existence would result in moral paralysis will depend on whether they accept the PIP principle or not.
It seems question begging to set E up as "bad or unjust". Surely, if it were bad or unjust, God would have reason to prevent it. Given that he does not, it is not bad or unjust. So I propose we change 1 to:
1. Take any event, E (including any you might naively feel is either bad or unjust) either God had a moral reason to prevent E, or He doesn’t.
Given that E only SEEMS to be immoral, PIP is irrelevant.
Hey, check out this one. It tackles a similar issue essentially the duality of God and the human mind.
https://darrengabrylewicz.substack.com/p/stepping-into-inferno