“Dementia gives no quarter and admits no bargaining.”
-Gillian Bennett (https://www.deadatnoon.com/index.html)
At the beginning of this journey into theodicies I mentioned the following categories of reasons God has to prevent EJ’s dementia:
1 - INTRINSIC EVILS
1a - The pain EJ experiences.
1b - The pain EJ’s immediate family members experience, especially that of her husband who is the closest to her.
1c - The pain of EJ’s friends, neighbors, churchgoers, extended family members, etc.
2 - INTRINSIC GOODS
2a - The happiness EJ would have experienced had the disease been prevented.
2b - The happiness EJ’s family would have experienced had the disease been prevented.
2c - The happiness EJ’s friends, neighbors, churchgoers, extended family members, etc., would have experienced had the disease been prevented.
Doing some simplified math to get a very rough idea of how many reasons this is, the categories of 1a and 2a (arguably the most important of the six) contain up to 50 million reasons. That’s not including all the moments of 1b, 1c, 2b, and 2c. Perhaps there are 10s of millions of more reasons.
Now, after our discussion of theodicies, what categories of reasons do we have to allow EJ’s dementia? None. Every category is contestable. Every theodicy fails. We have some usefulness and soul-making, but even those categories, all things considered, give us reason to prevent EJ’s dementia. There are, at best, only silver linings; we would cure EJ without hesitation if able.
In fact, along the way we picked up nine anti-theodicies; further categories of reasons to prevent EJ’s dementia. Perhaps some or all of these categories are subcategories that fit under the above six categories. Regardless, these anti-theodicies give us specific, descriptive reasons for why God should prevent EJ’s dementia, and collectively they represent the failure of theodicies to provide a single reason to do otherwise.
1) Maybe evils are necessary for us to appreciate the goodness of life. That could work in some cases, but not in cases that make us ask: What goodness of life? Dementia is one of those cases. EJ’s dementia prevents EJ’s ability to appreciate the goodness of life through both the cognitive decline of the disease and through the existential horror she experiences along the way.
Gratitude is a very good thing, and perhaps some evil is necessary to access gratitude. But EJ’s dementia makes gratitude less accessible for EJ. The same is true for EJ’s loved ones. It’s hard to appreciate life and to experience gratitude when a loved one is suffering from such a terrible disease.
2) Maybe evils are necessary to punish evildoers. But ask anyone who knows EJ and they will say she is a kind, innocent, blameless person who does not remotely deserve her fate. So not only is her situation tragic, but it’s unjust as well.
3) Some problems are good problems. They give us something to do, they make our lives more meaningful, and they allow us to be useful to others. When we solve problems, we experience success, which is a very good thing. Even in cases where we don’t feel useful, we might be useful to others, which is still good.
Dementia is a bad problem. It has basically no solution. There’s no cure and no treatment. It renders the afflicted more and more useless overtime, and it makes caretakers, doctors, and family members feel useless too. Facing unsolvable problems generates hopelessness, which is a very bad thing.
4) Deontological concerns are those moral concerns surrounding the treatment of a thinking, feeling individual as a thinking, feeling individual. To treat a person as an object, a plaything, or as a means to an end is to fail to empathize, to fail to care about the experiences of others, to betray a lack of virtue, and to fail to understand the badness of suffering and the goodness of flourishing.
An important deontic concern is that of consent. Often violating someone’s consent entails treating that person as if their feelings don’t matter. Consent does not override all other moral considerations; criminals do not consent to their incarceration, and children do not consent to their birth. But we often think arresting violent criminals and having children is justified.
Still, consent remains an extremely important factor when making moral calculations, especially when violating consent causes more suffering than respecting consent would. (Arguably, it is precisely because arresting criminals and having children is necessary for human flourishing that the violation of consent in these cases is justified.)
EJ did not consent to her situation, and there are no apparent reasons for why violating EJ’s consent is morally appropriate in this case.
5) God might allow evils to obtain high-order goods that aren’t possible otherwise. Certain goods like overcoming difficulty, sacrificing for others, demonstrating bravery and other virtues, resisting vices, and self-improvement, are only possible if there are evils. But this won’t apply to evils that outright kill you or incapacitate you, or cause you to despair of life or become cynical or traumatized. Dementia happens to be such an evil. Suffering can point us away from sin and toward the ways of God, building our faith. But evils like dementia only damage our faith.
6) God might allow evils to give us free will, which entails giving us the opportunity to demonstrate who we really are, and gives us meaningful, high-stakes choices. The problem with this is that 1) the goodness of free will is questionable, 2) having free will is not as important to us as being free from horrendous suffering, 3) even if free will is good, dementia destroys free will, 4) evil cannot require free will as heaven is evil-free, and 5) there are important arguments against the existence of free will.
7) Why complain about EJ’s dementia when she will receive heaven after she dies? Earth will be a vague memory in comparison to the eternal paradise that awaits. The problem is that Earth is either meaningful or not. If not, then God has no reason to create it. If it is, then you cannot trivialize our time on Earth. You cannot trivialize our time on Earth anyway because our experiences are certainly as big as they are when they happen and the future cannot change this. You cannot trivialize our time on Earth either because then the Gospel loses all meaning. Furthermore, our common sense morality says if you treat someone in an unloving manner, no amount of compensation removes the failure of love.
8) God might allow evils so that he can be glorified through them, such as through miracle healings. This would apply had EJ been miraculously healed by prayer, but this never happened.
9) Maybe the goodness of a Grand Story could overwhelm the badness of evils like EJ’s dementia, and evils are indirectly necessary to give rise to such a story. Maybe a fallen world is needed for God to express his love for us by dying for us. But God could also express his love to us by preventing horrendous suffering, and arguably freedom from horrendous suffering is more urgent for us. If God wants good stories, then God should prevent EJ’s tragic story by preventing her dementia or at least by curing it in response to prayer.
There are untold millions of uncontestable reasons for a rational person to prevent EJ’s dementia given the chance. There is not a single uncontestable reason for doing otherwise. The apparent reasons are completely and absolutely in favor of preventing EJ’s dementia. It’s not that there are some reasons in favor of allowing and these reasons are dwarfed by the reasons for preventing, but it’s that there are no apparent reasons at all for allowing EJ’s dementia. EJ’s dementia is apparently gratuitous, and thoroughly so.
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