Atheist parable of the problem of evil "The tale of the 12 officers"

[BrethrenBoy]

The tale of the 12 officers. I saw this posted on another thread and went and read it. I was wondering if anybody had any advice about how to respond to it. Any thoughts?

 

[St_Francis]

Many years ago I visited a cousin who had a greeting card on her fridge. On the outside was someone looking at a sad sight while sighing, “God, why don’t You do something?”

Inside, the card reported God’s words: “I did. I sent you.”

 

[bzkoss236]

God isn’t the proverbial police officer. He is Judge. So that is one mistake he makes in his analogy. The other is that his analysis doesn’t stick to his analogy, such as his saying that the one officer wanted the woman to believe in him, or wanted her to love him, or his testing her love for him? It’s all a bit of a ridiculous comparison.

 

[mymamamary]

**More atheist baloney. This argument hopes to entrance those who say “Evil exists, therefore GOD does not”,

Au contraire mes amis, GOD can still exist with evil. An argument from morals is not argument of non existence. More of a pouting child in defiance. Peter Kreeft has some wise things to say about suffering. What baffles me is that atheists try to comprehend the mystery of suffering, without trying to comprehend sin. Sin is the cause of pain and suffering. Eliminate sin, and you have eliminated suffering. No one should ATTEMPT to understand suffering and pain, without understanding sin. I am not saying that one has to understand it, for we as humans cannot. Sin, pain and suffering will remain mysteries until the clouds split open and Christ comes to judge the living and the dead. However we can grasp the fundamentals and therefore anyone desiring to undertake a discussion on the principles of pain and suffering should first ensure that they have also had a sufficient preparatory knowledge of sin and the nature of sin. **

 

[TomD123]

The tale of the 12 officers. I saw this posted on another thread and went and read it. I was wondering if anybody had any advice about how to respond to it. Any thoughts?

The big problem is that these are cops not God. When talking about God we have an entirely different situation.

I think when understanding the problem of evil, we have to realize something: In order for the problem of evil to refute God, we have to know that God does not have morally sufficient reason to allow for a certain kind of suffering. What the 12 officers thing is basically saying is that in the case of rape and murder, there is no reason why a good God could allow such a thing. They are saying that there is no greater good which God could bring out of the evil. Thi is a pretty big claim, which I think is unfounded.

 

[SonCatcher]

It’s not an argument as much as a lampoon of some simple explanations for the Problem of Evil. The only statement in the whole parable that seems remotely true is the last one: “…we were suffering along with her, and we experienced exactly the same pain she did, or perhaps even more.”

 

[BrethrenBoy]

Thanks for the responses. How should I respond if an atheist tries to use this or something like it in a debate?

 

[vlf7973]

I agree with SonCatcher… it’s just twelve separate (common) arguments in the form of a narrative. And most of the arguments don’t use premises that a Christian would even accept in the first place (e.g. Christians do not believe that “there can’t be any good without evil” or that God causes people to sin in order to “test” other people).

 

[vlf7973]

Thanks for the responses. How should I respond if an atheist tries to use this or something like it in a debate?

If this were used in a debate then you’d probably need to disprove all twelve arguments…

 

[Credo_in_Deum]

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was once written a letter from a woman who was raped. She asked him why would a good God let this happen. His reply was while her rape was an inexcusable injustice, she nevertheless had taken on the sins of one man, and that in doing so she had taken on the likeness of Christ who bore the sins of all mankind, with love.

[bibledrb]1 Peter 2:19-21 [/bibledrb]

 

[fred_conty]

Those twelve officers did not lay down their lives - that is the test.​

“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” (hymn)

 

[valekhai]

Thanks for the responses. How should I respond if an atheist tries to use this or something like it in a debate?

Start by pointing out that the officers in the parable are not omnipotent, omniscient, or morally perfect, all of which are qualities of the Christian God according to pretty much any Christian theology. This makes the analogy weak. If the person you are talking to is just repeating this story without having given it much thought, this will probably be enough to stump them; they’ll probably concede your point and abandon the argument, or they’ll try to come up with a hasty rationalization that you can probably pick apart if you stick to your guns.

If they have given it thought beforehand, they’ll probably point out that analogies don’t need to work on every level to point at something true, and they’ll probably admit that this isn’t supposed to be a logical argument but an emotional one. You’re supposed to find the thoughts and actions (rather lack thereof) of the officers reprehensible, and it can cause a sort of cognitive dissonance if you condemn the officer’s behavior without being critical of God’s. Of course, having some sort of satisfactory theodicy solves that, but more on that in a moment.

At this point in the discussion, you could play that “by what standard can you judge God’s morality” card and sidetrack the debate into a discussion about morality in general. Whoever “wins” this argument will be the one who is the most used to navigating that territory.

Alternately, you could do something unexpected and bite the bullet. Which officer most closely matches your solution of the problem of evil? Defend that view, pointing out the ways that the qualities of God not possessed by the officer (omnipotence, etc.) nullify the discomfort or disgust felt when evaluating humans in this situation. This probably won’t convince your opponent, but there’s really nothing else you can do; his position will probably be better on an emotional level, but you can still appeal to a theodicy that is reasonable.

Of course, this depends on you having a theodicy that is not only well-thought-out, but it needs to be something that you personally find emotionally satisfactory. The fact that you’re here asking for advice suggests to me that you might not be there yet; I could be completely wrong about that, but I’d think that your responses would be obvious if you already were in that place. If I’m right, the real answer to your question is that you shouldn’t be debating this at all because you aren’t ready. That’s nothing to be ashamed of; I’ve found that a lot of Christians don’t have a solution to the problem of evil that they really feel is deeply satisfactory. A lot of them think that they do because they heard one somewhere that sounded good, but they didn’t think about it deeply and it became more of a “cached answer” rather than a good explanation. They may not realize it until faced with a tragedy in their own life or something like the Twelve Officers story that forces them to think about it on a deeper level, and then they tend to struggle.

If this is the case with you, like I said, don’t engage with this argument yet. If you’re already invested in a discussion with it, bow out and go do some reading on theodicy and the problem of evil until you have your answers.

 

[yellow8yellowM]

Thanks for the responses. How should I respond if an atheist tries to use this or something like it in a debate?

The first thing that came to my mind was that the officers had no common sense. Everybody knows it would be wrong to just stand there. Why? Because God has written morality into our hearts. Without God, we would have no basis for believing that what the officers did was wrong.

I also second the other posters’ comments that the analogy doesn’t hold up because the officers are not God.