The “Problem of Evil”:
Note that Dan Barker has proven his case, at least in his own peculiarly imaginative mind. According to Barkerian ethics anything can be moral. What about forcing a mother to cannibalize her own child’s face while the child is still alive? Sure, that could be moral if aliens came to earth and demanded…well you know the story. Is it any wonder why Dan Barker has stated “I think abortion is a blessing” during his debate with John Rankin?
Moreover, I find it odd that Dan Barker could claim that it would be immoral to refrain from rape because that would mean that “you would kill all of us.” After all, according to a general understanding of Dan Barker’s worldview all of humanity will become exterminated when the sun explodes. During his debate with Paul Manata Dan Barker stated, “There is no moral interpreter in the cosmos, nothing cares and nobody cares.” He makes a point to the effect that what happens to us or a vegetable ultimately does not matter. Will it? He states, “…what happens to me or a piece of broccoli, it won’t, the Sun is going to explode, we’re all gonna be gone. No one’s gonna care.” He then concludes that we should be good to each other etc.
Yet, this does not necessarily follow. I could claim that all of humanity will someday be extinct so be nice or conclude that all of humanity will someday be extinct so oppress humanity. I could conclude that I should love my neighbor or beat up my neighbor. I could feed the poor or eat the poor. The Barkerian ethic is foundationless and so it is merely an open door to make any excuse that you want for any behavior whatsoever.
Aliens may make rape moral, Timothy McVeigh’s justifications could make blowing up a building inhabited by men, women and children moral, Dan Barker makes a living from besmirching the majority of humanity and considers it moral, etc.
Now Dan Barker has brought us to the most important point to be gleaned from the Barkerian ethic. This is the main point that we have been driving towards in so carefully dissecting his statements on ethics:
By his very own standards he has utterly and absolutely discredited his own criticism of religion, Christianity, the Bible, God, Jesus, etc.
This is the pertinent though experiment and the question that should be asked each and every time that he does criticize any ethic at all (remember this is according to his very own standards): if I can think of an exception, even one single one, even one that involves voyeuristic aliens then Dan Barker has absolutely no right to condemn any actions at all as being immoral-no past actions, no present actions and no future actions.
The way this works is, for example, by pointing out that Dan Barker disapprovingly stated that “the God of the Bible commanded and condoned rape.” This is, of course, a self-serving emotive polemical point yet which ends up discrediting Dan Barker further since it is utterly false. There is no logical argumentation that is easier to deal with than when someone discredits themselves.
Yet, let us grant this fallacy momentarily in order to note that all we have to do is respond thusly, “But if aliens can turn rape into a moral action then so can God.”
Or his statement, “Any ethical system that’s based on threats and promises is morally bankrupt.” We may respond thusly, “But since I can think of an exception then the threats and promises based ethic is moral.”
What if God has a reason-even one single reason, even one reason that we do not know about, even one that never occurred to us, maybe even one that we would reject as being fallacious-for performing a certain action or allowing a certain action to take place?
This is what philosophically answers the “problem of evil.” If God has even one reason or any sort for allowing evil then there is no “problem of evil.”
I say, “philosophically” because the only “problem of evil” that remains is an emotional problem, and rightly so. Simply because there is a satisfying logical explanation does not mean that it is easy to deal with emotionally. Dan Barker, for one, has virtually based his career as a professional activist atheism by playing on the emotions of those for whom “the problem of evil” is a deeply emotional issue.
While we could certainly emphasize with this shared and basic human tendency it should not be simply granted as an excuse for Dan Barker to offer up condemnations based purely on arguments from outrage.
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