God & Rape: The Problem of Evil
Way back in 2012, Republican Richard Mourdock said he believed that abortion is acceptable only to save the life of the mother. Then he went on to say: “Life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen.” Mourdock was criticized for these remarks, but my interest is not in revisiting the political fights of 2012. Rather, I will instead focus on his claim that if a woman gets pregnant from rape, then God intended it to happen. This is a narrowly focused version of the problem of reconciling a certain conception of God (all good, all powerful and all knowing) with the existence of evil. It also falls under the question of God’s causal relation to the world.
Mourdock presented a view of God that has long been argued for by theologians and philosophers. This is the view that God is the cause of all that occurs and that nothing occurs contrary to God’s intention. For example, Hume in his essay on the immortality of the soul, writes “as every effect implies a cause, and that another, till we reach the first cause of all, which is the Deity; everything that happens is ordained by him…”
As far as things happening against God’s intention, this would seem impossible given the assumption that God is all powerful and all knowing. After all, things could only go against His intention if He lacked the power to do otherwise or something took place without His knowledge. If He is all knowing and all powerful, then nothing can happen contrary to His intention. Thus, if someone becomes pregnant from rape, then God (if He exists) intended that to happen-just as Mourdock claimed.
It might be replied that God allows things to happen contrary to His intention because of free will. In the case of rape, the rapist freely willed that they would commit rape and God had to allow that to happen. While this might get Him off the hook about allowing rape, it does not do so in the case of pregnancy. After all, God could allow rapists to freely rape and still prevent rape from causing pregnancy. He could, for example, give women that pregnancy shut down system that Todd Akin infamously mentioned. Or, even better, he could allow people the free will to choose rape but prevent them from ever acting on that choice. God could, for example, give them explosive diarrhea until they stopped free willing an intention to rape. As such, if God exists, then God does intend for the pregnancies that arise from rape.
There is, of course, the question of whether women should be legally compelled to endure these God intended pregnancies. An anti-abortion person might argue that since God intended the woman to get pregnant from rape, then abortions should not be allowed because God’s intentions must be honored. The easy and obvious reply to this is that the same logic would entail that we should do nothing in response to anything that happens other than accept it as God’s intention. To use a silly example, if your house is on fire, then God intended it to be on fire and hence you should let it burn. This is the same logic as reasoning that if a woman is impregnated by rape, then she should complete the pregnancy.
It can also be argued that we can determine God’s intentions about abortion by allowing abortion. After all, if God intends for the pregnancy to go through, then God can guarantee that happens since what God wants God gets. If an abortion succeeds, then either God intended for it to succeed (and thus the abortion should have been conducted) or God does not exist (or was unable to act on His intention). As such, arguing against abortion based on God’s alleged intent is absurd.
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