The Problem of Evil: The Lisbon Earthquake (Voltaire vs. Rousseau)

in the year 1755 in the city of Lisbon there was an earthquake it was maybe one of the biggest earthquakes that the earth has ever experienced that we know about where people were there to feel it in about five minutes of intense shaking at what probably would be measured like a 9.0 on the Richter scale if they'd had such a thing this earthquake basically leveled one of the major cultural centres of Europe to thaw out and what's more it happened on All Saints Day a major Church holiday and so everyone was in church and the building that they were in the major church they were in and Lisbon absolutely fell down on their heads and crushed everyone inside dozens and dozens of public buildings and institutions including what was maybe the world's most major public hospital of its time were destroyed burning alive all of the patients inside maybe around 50,000 people were killed Lisbon maybe had a population of about 200,000 people and and maybe you know thirty thousand of the people who died died right there in Lisbon itself major major disaster had profound effects not just materially on the city itself and the people who died obviously and so on but also in the history of ideas because the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 marks a major schism in thinking in European educated West about the relationship between God and nature when you see an event like that or for those of us living in Oregon we can maybe think of the Cascadia subduction zone earthquake as like our looming disaster that they say is out there if something like that happens and just absolutely ruins civilization to its core changes all of our lives forever is it so easy to think that God is up there kind of like a puppet master just pulling the strings of earthquakes hurricanes rainstorms this and that is God really behind it all is that really what God is up to that's a fascinating question just to ask yourself whether you're a Christian or not it's a more a more direct question if you are a Christian if you believe there's a God do you believe that God sends natural disasters to punish people or do you believe that God would answer prayers to change the weather to make people happy so if you want a more lighthearted example how about thinking about you know let's say I don't know let's say it's your wedding day and you want a really sunny day do you think that it's do you think that if you sit and pray like oh god please let there be Sun on my wedding day that God's like sitting up there like mmm I really want a moment to part the clouds for this one you know and if you pray for Sun on your wedding day but it ends up raining does that mean that God was like mmm no I want it to rain on their wedding you know is that the way it is what about with more serious things though like a hurricane I remember back up this is around the year 2006 in the spring me 2005-2006 there was a hurricane Hurricane Katrina that struck the Gulf Coast particularly at New Orleans Louisiana and it was so destructive so big and immediately afterward there were a few kind of Christian voices not maybe mainstream Christian voices but you know voices that had prominence in media at least or whom were amplified by the media maybe just because of the strangeness of their view said that God had sent that hurricane directly to punish the New Orleans gambling industry which was kind of an odd claim you know given that you know a lot of the gambling you know institutions maybe weren't totally destroyed but a lot of homes and people's lives were destroyed especially poor people who live there along the coast so it's like how do you make sense of this does God actually do that sort of thing this Lisbon earthquake caused a lot of thinkers to wonder whether or not God was really a good God if God just allowed a natural disaster like that whether he'd sent it directly or just allowed it as overseer of the universe allowed an earthquake like that to destroy so many lives and and so many buildings and and particularly the fact that it happened on All Saints Day on a church holiday you know it just kind of gave it like this you know it'd be like it'd be like something like this happening on Easter Sunday when we were all in church you know or something it's hard not to see some kind of divine drama taking place in the wake of this earthquake then the Natural Sciences and the you know and religious studies or theology began to wear as they were once you know how much more unified disciplines began to sever apart as now people began to wonder maybe we should start thinking about earthquakes in terms of just like natural causes you know I'm a young thinker named Immanuel Kant who would be one of the most major thinkers of the 18th century major philosophers around that time developed the first non supernatural theory of why earthquakes happen that we know of turns out he wasn't correct but it was some stuff about the earth shifting and whatnot and maybe he was on the right track we know that earthquakes are caused by tectonic plates and things like that the way people reacted to this earthquake though proved very decisive for thinking about theodicy and today work in this short lecture which I'll cut a little bit shorter than some of the others that I've been rambling on long in the most recent few lectures we'll be considering a poem by by a bias by an Enlightenment thinker Voltaire French intellectual who actually was an atheist and who took great delight in pointing out how this earthquake showed that maybe God wasn't so good after all maybe God's not so amazing when he allows an earthquake like this to crush mothers and babies and the wicked and the righteous and everyone alike and then I want to consider in response to Voltaire one of his contemporaries jean-jacques Rousseau famous Enlightenment thinker a novelist and a philosopher who wrote a letter to Voltaire telling him that his poem thank you very much sir but your poem sucks and we can defend God from all of this and you're wrong about everything okay and so in reading these you know you you I think the messages are pretty clear from Voltaire's poem which is called the Lisbon earthquake an inquiry into the maxim whatever is is right we find a denunciation of God in God's ways the reference there in the title and inquiry into the maxim whatever is is right if you have the reader and if you just turn back a page there's there's an excerpt from alexander pope's an essay on man also written in the 1700s which was a big bestseller during this time and had a conclusion page 203 in the reader in reading about god namely whatever is whatever whatever is is right okay the world tis true was made for caesar but for titus to so has a kind of best of all possible worlds sort of flavor to it whatever you see around us that's it's correct there's nothing wrong with the world okay so Voltaire's poem is its very title is is set as a rebuttal against and this idea and it's pretty straightforward he says look around at the world look at this earthquake look at the results of the earthquake crushed bodies piles of corpses is this year God your God really is the one watching over all this count me out he says just in various ways over and over again this isn't right the universe is wrong all these theodicy solutions you come out come up with they don't work page 208 he kind of states the terms of what we will be called the theodicy triangle or the trilemma page - i ain't near the top a god once dwelt on earth amongst mankind yet vices still lay waste the human mind he could not do it this proud sophist cries he could but he declined it that replies he surely were will air these disputes have end Lisbon's foundation foundations hidden thunders rend and 30 cities shattered remnants fly with ruin and combustion through the sky so he talks in these kind of grand poetic terms about the suffering during the earthquake asking was God really in charge of this think about what you're saying okay if you say God's in charge of everything you got to say he's in charge of this - he doesn't just preside over picnics and beautiful moments and walks in the park and little birds fluttering through the sky but also through disasters through floods through earthquakes I wonder - even just to reflect on the shot this genre for thinking about see we've encountered many different genres so far in these lectures prophetic announcements from Isaiah and Habakkuk narrative from the book of Genesis philosophy from Plato and from others here we have a poem but we you know is this a good way to reflect on on theodicy itself is a poem an effective way to deny traditional theodicies is it convincing you know the way he uses emotion and this imagery of crushed bodies and mothers and babies is this effective I ask rhetorically 2uo listener Rousseau writes him a letter in response ok Rizzo was a famous philosopher he basically says look look Voltaire my friend they're all very pleased very polite to Voltaire look my friend you know uses all these kinds of terms you know you're kind of making the world look a lot worse than it is ok he says it's not as bad as you say what Rousseau says be an optimist I'm an optimist why are you such a pessimist optimism makes you feel better Rousseau has an alternate theodicy one that was very distinct two or so in which you know I think is a pretty relatable kind of theodicy and just as powerful as Voltaire is denunciation of God's ways he says look people are free and people are corrupted and basically we cause our own evil God doesn't cause the evil in the world we caused it because we're stupid and we do stupid things for example Rousseau points out why did so many people build so many high buildings in Lisbon why weren't this what why was the city so populated far fewer people he says would have died if we wouldn't have built these big buildings and everybody lives next to each other or if if after it's similar to saying like after a hurricane that strikes a coastal region why do so many people live along the coast they don't have to live along the coast don't live along the coast if you don't want to get struck by hurricane don't live alone the ghost if you don't wanna live in danger of an earthquake don't live in Oregon if you don't want to get struck by a tornado don't live in the Midwest you know it goes on and on and maybe a flaw to the system it's discovered there's always a place there's always a problem somewhere you can't just escape everything we saw also says that a lot of people died trying to save their possessions you know so that's just human stupidity you hear about this every time as a plane crash like that that play that went down in the Hudson River with captain Sully the miracle on the Hudson no one died in that crash miraculously but one problem was that despite the fact that the flight attendants said as the planes crashing do not go do not take your luggage people were fighting each other and grasping and trying to grab their luggage maybe it's a natural human reaction or maybe people are just babies and totally selfish and didn't understand the situation that they're in so Rousseau would look at a situation like that and say it's just bad behavior basically people are dum-dums okay like don't blame God for you for you being stupid okay Voltaire had said you know in the poem that few people would want to be reborn in the same conditions in which they had lived he quotes them on on page 212 here you know you think along with Erasmus that few people would want to be reborn in the same conditions in which they lived you know I'm not sure if he's referring to the poem here just some of there's something else that Voltaire had said he says look ask any peasant out there if they're happy with their life they're gonna say yes people on the whole are pretty much happy yes we have problems yes we have pain oh that's another fascinating question too right would you like to be reborn in the same conditions in which you deliver your life again and again it's it's fascinating to ask that question of younger people people who are maybe in the prime of their life and you're going to college maybe and doing great ask that though some people who are living in less good conditions when they want to live their life again if they were born into the same kinds of conditions okay maybe not maybe Rousseau says were too obsessed with humans and human problems you know don't you know don't don't don't make out the problems to be more than they are Rousseau appeals like Conway did and some other thinkers too and liveness actually did the idea that maybe there are other planets out there which is a which is a kind of a fun thought maybe there are other planets out there he says on page 213 and maybe those planets are inhabited and you know maybe you know maybe there's just more to this whole question gods got other things to worry about you know we're just one speck of dust in this cosmos okay so he basically says look like philosophers are crybabies stop being a crybaby okay all of this comes down to the existence of God Rousseau says if God is there and God is good then God is just and perfect and powerful and ultimately this whole situation is is good ultimately though Rousseau says this is on page 215 Jesus ultimately we've got to admit we just don't know what we're talking about you know we're all kind of in a state of doubt there's a lot of objections a lot of arguments but we don't really know what we mean he ends with an ad hominem attack against Voltaire saying basically look Voltaire you're living a life of luxury and leisure you know you're hanging out in Paris and drinking wine and eating at these wonderful restaurants and the whole world sucks to you yet yet me Rousseau says look I'm sick I'm having problems but I find hope in it all you know so who can say so hopefully in reading these two things you get a sense of what's at stake for either thinker for Voltaire these horrible gruesome images of suffering really do raise the question of can God affect the natural order like that and if he does can you think er a listener Oh Christian a person out there okay can you interpret the world correctly to know exactly which lightning bolt which hurricane God has sent and to kill whom and when do you look at the piles of bodies and just say the righteous and the wicked perish together there's no order to it and we can't say that a good God is in charge of this mess or do you look like Rousseau and say look like let's not let's not be dramatic about this people are stupid we do some stupid things it's our own faults if we could just be smarter things would get better and we wouldn't blame God for our problems okay I like the idea of those seeing these two thinkers back-to-back Voltaire's poem and then rooster Russo's response to the poem for a wide range of theodicy views alright that's all for now see ya