Hold Still, Let Me Alleviate You
Because the question is, what good is sympathy and alleviating suffering if there is no suffering? What is the point of them? There is no point. They’re not needed. They’re not even virtues. The notion is absurd. Suppose a friend bounces up to you, full of bliss and happiness, to tell you some good news. Is it a good thing to clutch her hand damply and say how sorry you are? Is it a good thing to push her down and force morphine down her throat? No. Your sympathy and alleviation aren’t needed or wanted. (Sympathy in the sense of fellow-feeling is probably welcome, but that’s not what Swinburne means here.) And if your friend is never suffering and in pain, they never will be. They’re not needed unless we are in fact suffering and in pain; so why would they be good in and of themselves? They wouldn’t. But Swinburne seems to be assuming they would. Why? Why does he assume that? Other than, of course, sheer desperation to come up with some reason that pain and illness are good things.
And why on earth would it be a good thing that suffering ‘provides society with the opportunity to choose whether or not to invest a lot of money in trying to find a cure for this or that particular kind of suffering’? Why is that opportunity good or desirable if suffering doesn’t exist? It isn’t. Society could go off and think about other things, ponder other choices, seize different opporunities to choose what to invest in. So why does Swinburne say it that way, as if it’s somehow inherently good for society to have an opportunity to choose whether or not to invest a lot of money in trying to find a cure for suffering? Why does he think so back to front? ‘It is good for society to choose whether or not to spend money on cures for suffering, therefore, it is good that people should suffer.’ If he thinks that’s right, does he think war is good because it gives military surgeons lots of practice? If he thinks that, does he then think that the more injuries there are, the better? If he thinks that, then is he depressed on days when the newspapers are slightly less full of injuries? Is he pleased when there are earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes? Surely the logic of his peculiar argument entails that he must be. If suffering is good so that people can be sympathetic and society can make budget decisions, then the more of it there is, the better, right? Because the more suffering there is, the more chances to be sympathetic there are, so it must be a case of the more the better. So we’re all being negligent and cruel if we fail to hurt each other at every opportunity? Is that right?
I think Swinburne would endorse what most believers cling to — the hopeful intuition that nothing bad ever really happens. Everything really is for the best, if we but knew. After all, God is in charge. There is no such thing as random chance,let alone bad luck.
If a person is in pain and nobody alleviates his pain, then no matter. There’s obviously a Bad Guy somewhere, who will get theirs. Maybe the bad guy is the person who ignored their opportunity to show compassion. Maybe the bad guy is you, trying to play God and give the person in pain an opportunity to show endurance. Or maybe the bad guy is the sufferer himself, who, like the atheist in the foxhole, needs some pain and terror to realize just who is in charge. The bad guy is never God, of course. God gets to play God, because he knows how the plot has to go to get to the happy ending. It’s exactly like in a book.
The “Soul-building Theodicy” is unfalsifiable in the same way that prayer is unfalsifiable. Whatever happens, there’s your answer. You need to put on the glasses of faith to see that Panglossian glow on everything.
The more suffering the better? Look at Armaggeddon. If it happens to Bad Guys, it’s good.
That’s more or less the answer. That’s how, despite praising all the suffering there is, he avoids saying there should be lots, lots more of it. However much there is is always exactly the right amount because god knows what’s really good for us, as opposed to our flawed idea that not having all those horrible things happen to us might be good for us. Swinburne keeps it nice and vague, general talk of pain, suffering, illness, disability, but when you look at the details of some the nastiest diseases and conditions he claims are all inflicted on us by a god who is always good whether or not we’re passing out from the pain of exquisitely designed tortures, well, it’s way worse than tearing the wings off flies. If flies had brains sophisticated enough to philosophise with, they might describe cruel schoolboys the way Swinburne describes his god. Nice of god to create morphine, wasn’t it? Although, of course, doing without might make some of us a bit holier. What I find staggering, though I’m sure Swinburne can explain it, is all the atheists god permits to live long, happy lives, some of them with scarcely a day’s illness till passing away peacefully in their sleep. I guess he just doesn’t care enough about them to want to purify their souls with suffering, although I’ve noticed there are some atheists he really has it in for. Not to mention some babies and small children. If it were someone other than god doing all that, one might sometimes wonder…
Of course, arguing is completely pointless when faced with a Swinburne. One knows in advance that there is no amount of cruel suffering undergone by anyone apparently undeserving that Swinburne can’t explain as the act of a good god who knows what he’s doing and it is always for our best. And you can’t argue with it because to do so you would have take issue with how he arrived at that viewpoint. And that’s where all argument goes dead, because he didn’t “arrive” at it. It’s his starting point. He cannot consider the possibility that that might not be the case because it is his base assumption whenever he expresses himself.
How does Swinburne’s god account for the
interaction between ichneumonidae and
caterpillars?
That article is very informative and revealing. It shows why theists, who believe that after death they are destined for a Heaven in which there is no pain and suffering, aren’t in any hurry to die and get to their Heaven: because of its lack of suffering, it is inferior to life here on Earth. Now I finally understand why theists pray to their various gods to be cured of potentially fatal diseases.
“He cannot consider the possibility that that might not be the case because it is his base assumption whenever he expresses himself.”
Except to some extent of course he must consider it. I mean, the guy’s at Oxford. He doesn’t live in a bubble. He must encounter people who challenge him all the time. The stuff he talks is such obvious crap, and vicious crap at that, that he must get challenged more than your average philosopher of religion. And yet, apparently, it doesn’t phase him. How does he manage that, I wonder? I really do. I find the whole thing very odd.
This reminds me of the nun in Greene’s ‘A Burnt-Out Case’ whose response to medical intervention is to wail, ‘But if this keeps up, soon there won’t be any lepers.’
Hmm – that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of it that way – but it’s like the thought that reformers or fans of reform have – if suddenly everything were perfect, they would have nothing to strive for. The result is often not bliss but a rather blank feeling. But! People with sense and decency realize that that’s just too bad. We don’t get to wish misery on people just so that we can have something to do! And neither does the god damn deity.
Elliot: You do realize that if that evil temptress Eve had not forced her Patriarch Adam to eat that darn apple, then ichneumonidae would be singing and dancing with the caterpillars?
A couple years back at an atheist solstice picnic I met a man who told me that not long ago he had gone to the hospital for (I think) kidney stones. He’d had them before, but this time he was in a Catholic hospital. A nun took personal information and asked him his religion. He told her “atheist.” She raised her brows and smiled, he said. “Well, well, well…” She seemed amused.
After the operation he was in more pain than he had ever been in his life. Previous hospitalizations were nothing. He told me he almost went out of his mind.
And his recollection is that the nurses/nuns were behaving oddly, hovering around, giving him strange looks and acting reluctant to call for help. At least it seemed that way.
Now of course, he could be wrong — and he admits this — but he said it’s his sincere belief that something funny happened with the anaesthetic and pain medication. He thinks he wasn’t given enough and he believes this was deliberate. He thought at the time — and still believes — that the nurses or doctors were “testing” his atheism. Showing him how much he needed God. Expecting him to call out his awareness of his Creator, or some such nonsense. Bring him to Jesus.
He mentioned this to his regular doctor on his post-op visit, and the doc seemed concerned and asked him if he wanted an investigation. The man said no. He just wanted out of there. Get him out.
Did the nuns or anaesthesologist reduce or eliminate pain medication in order to save the man’s soul? I don’t know.
But I wouldn’t put it past them. Not if they were really sincere in the belief that pain and suffering brings us closer to God. It would actually be a fairly reasonable thing to try. I can even imagine the story which would come out of it. “We were sly and a bit naughty, and a so-called atheist who pretended that he didn’t believe in God found out he did…” It’s the stuff of urban legends.
And while of course Swinburne probably wouldn’t recommend or endorse this scenario, I suspect he’d understand and empathise with the source from which it springs.
Sastra,
You should write that up into a short story.
Aaaaaaaaaaaargh –
That’s not impossible. I’d forgotten, until reading Sastra’s nightmare story, but that’s Ma Teresa. The nuns didn’t give pain medication at that hellhole in Calcutta.
Crap. And then people wonder why atheists get angry…
I once worked with someone who had worked with Mother Teresa, had a whole holy glow whenever someone brought it up. I waited in vain for a chance to plagiarise a line once heard;
‘You know the most important thing I learned from Mother Teresa?’
‘Moisturise?’
Aah, I’ll just stick with Hitchen’s “thieving Albanian dwarf.” Heightist but not ageist.
But she was seriously terrible. They didn’t treat people at that place. They collected money by the cartload, but they didn’t treat people – they just watched them die, often in agony. She should have been locked up.
The man who told the story might still be around — I can check to see if anyone in the group remembers who he was. However, since he didn’t follow up or investigate, he might feel that his interpretation is far too speculative. And he may be right. If I were Catholic, I’d jump on it for just that reason.
Although the surgery had been about a year before, he was still shook up about it. I don’t remember specifically, but I’m going to guess that others in the group urged him to “do something.” My recollection is that he wanted nothing to do with that hospital — or nuns — ever again. Bottom line, he felt that he had made a poor decision telling the Catholic hospital his true beliefs, and used his story as a cautionary tale.
The excuses that people allow God set a precedent for themselves; not exactly condusive to ethical behaviour. The whole right-to-die debate snaps into clear focus here–while you live, the faithful hold you hostage to some nebulous and mythical higher cause, and block all routes of escape. Suffering is good for you, so here’s your golden opportunity. Our God is a God of mercy, but not for you, not yet. We’ve got you now.
Life holds more than enough opportunities to suffer in small doses; depression, cognitive disonance, doubt, challenge to cherished beliefs, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. But these are challenges best met by examining and discarding outmoded beliefs; calmer opportunities to learn from our failures. Guidance could be offered in these areas, to overcome our resistance to admitting that we were wrong, to devote the effort required to educate ourselves. But no, better to corner people into episodes of blinding, irrational agony to produce precipitous epiphanies, incentives to desparate gambles. As Hunter Thompson observed, kill the head and the body will follow.
This is a religion not of the heart, but of the spleen.
Re Sastra’s story–It’s possible that a patient who is sick and full of pain might be distracted enough to misinterpret the behavior of medical personnel. But I’m not sure I’d put sadism past those nurses.
Some people in this class I have been taking have at times reassured each other that the problems they’ve had are all part of “God’s plan”; it seems they think said god will do something real nice in a while that will outbalance all the bad things. I suppose such a good thing could happen, conceivably, but I don’t look to a god for it. I don’t feel inclined to trust any god that is such a bumbler, and had all I could do to keep my lunch inside me, hearing such pap. I would hold a higher power to a higher ethical standard than ours, not a lower one.
If people *must* believe in weird things, why the hell can’t they make up something of their own, and be creative, instead of recycling crap thousands of years old??
I’ve just been reading an inspiring articel about a cyclist who was hit by a car and suffered serious head injuries. However, doctors put him into an induced coma and gradually, over the months, brought him out of it mentally and physically unscathed.
So what does he do? He thanks those who prayed for him!!!
Aaaggghhh…
Chris, I don’t know if you’ve seen the latest conclusions on the efficacy of prayer, but consider: this bloke was in an induced coma. He couldn’t have known people were praying for him. Hence, it did him no harm.
So the cyclist forgot to thank the driver who hit him, thus providing doctors a chance to put him in a coma and other people a chance to pray for him? Well how damn ungrateful is that?!
Yeah, really. Hitchens’s book on her is the source. Exactly – most people don’t realize she was that bad. It’s infuriating – her name is in fact a shorthand for extra, conspicuous, energetic, self-sacrificing goodness. But she was a horror. Yet that fact doesn’t sink in.
Check out this review for instance.
“Hitchens dug up an article that appeared in the noted British medical journal, The Lancet (September, 1994). The article is by a physician who visited and inspected the Calcutta facility. He was quite disturbed by what he saw. He observed misdiagnoses and administration of inappropriate medications. He was particularly appalled that no strong analgesics were used to control intractable pain.
How bad things are in Mother Teresa’s care of the sick, and how primitive her thinking is in other respects as well, can be seen in the observations Hitchens received from a host of former employees and volunteers in the Missionaries of Charity. After a critical film of his on the order was televised, he received communications from them. He used only those who were willing to have their names used and who answered certain inquiries that assured authenticity. The picture presented by this evidence reveals the sharp contrast between the received opinion about her work and the reality, and it relates some of the harm she does. It is not necessary to cite here all the reported negligence and malpractices, which range from repeatedly using the same injection needles without sterilizing them to a refusal to send to the hospital those in clear need of surgery.”
A number of critics have made this charge in detail, but clearly they were starting from a hostile position and so are not the strongest source material.
However, Dr Robin Fox, editor of The Lancet, visited the Calcutta operation in 1994 expecting to be impressed so his findings probably provide the most dispassionate condemnation of conditions;
‘Finally, how competent are the sisters at managing pain? On a short visit, I could not judge the power of their spiritual approach, but I was disturbed to learn that the formulary includes no strong analgesics. Along with the neglect of diagnosis, the lack of good analgesia marks Mother Teresa’s approach as clearly separate from the hospice movement. I know which I prefer.’
Dr Fox described TB patients not being isolated, syringes washed in lukewarm water, if at all, before being used again. He detailed patients in pain being refused painkillers on principle- not because they were unavailable.
Teresa’s response was ‘ ‘The most beautiful gift for a person is that he can participate in the suffering of Christ.’ Dr. Fox also told how MT once tried to comfort a dying man by stating, ‘You are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you.’ The man screamt out: ‘Then tell your Jesus to stop kissing me.’
Dr Preger ( a Calcutta ‘street doctor of high standing) who once worked at the ‘clinic’ said ‘‘If one wants to give love, understanding and care, one uses sterile needles. This is probably the richest order in the world. Many of the dying there do not have to be dying in a strictly medical sense.’
Sorry I can’t provide primary sources, but if you google ‘Mother Teresa’ and ‘Robin Fox’ or ‘Jack Preger’, prepare to be depressed.
Note that when Teresa herself fell ill, only the best was good enough.
There’s an old saying (old, so in masculine gender), “You can’t reason someone out of a position he hasn’t reasoned himself into.”
Of course, at least some of the critics who started from a hostile position arrived at a hostile position for sound reasons…
Anyway, as the review notes, Hitchens got communications from people who had actually worked with her, so started out as fans, not hostile witnesses.
OB,
Absolutely, just thought it was important not to rely too much on critics who could be attacked as parisan, however rationally arrived at their partisanship might be.
Don,
Sure. I had the same thought – so I was glad that review cited the Lancet article and the former employees and volunteers.
Maybe I should do a Ma Teresa In Focus. This stuff isn’t well known enough…
And then there’s those people who say “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”–how come that doesn’t always work?
Actually it was Nietzsche who said it. The counter is: “That which does not kill you makes you cynical and bitter.”