#1

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

- some basics -

The so-called ‘problem of evil’ is an argument which has as its conclusion that God does not exist.  Or more precisely, it has as its conclusion that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and completely good God does not exist.

I suspect many have been persuaded by the argument, and (that they) have therefore stopped believing such a deity exists.  As far as the reach of the argument goes, such persons may then turn to a diminished kind of deity, either one that is not all-powerful, or not all-knowing, or not completely good.  And, indeed, even more fundamental properties of the deity might be given up along with one or more of these, e.g., its personal nature. 

The argument is quite simple.  It is that:

   1. If there were a God who was completely good, and all-powerful, and all-knowing, then there would   be no evil in the world. 

    2.     There is evil in the world.

    3.      Therefore, such a God does not exist. [1]

I think it is fair to say that most believers who wish to defend against this argument do not attack its validity.  This is because it is manifestly valid.  The conclusion plainly does follow from the premises.  Most often they attack the truth of one or the other of the two premises.  Frequently,  the attack is concentrated on the second premise.  Such folk deny that there is evil in the world.

Understandably, this denial is often greeted with incredulity by persons with any experience of the world.  The feeling on their part is to wonder where such believers have been all their lives.  However, the believers may have something behind their view, namely, the further view that what seems to be evil to us is not really evil at all.  Now we have some reason to accept that this kind of mistake is sometimes made by us.  In the late middle ages and early renaissance it was often thought that dissection of human corpses was an evil activity.  Because of the knowledge ultimately gained about human anatomy owing to such activity, this evaluative view has largely been rejected.  What seemed to be evil (to many) was not really evil at all.  Still, it is difficult to believe on the basis of such anecdotal foundations as these—no matter how credible the cases they adduce may individually be—that it would be rational to reject the general idea that preventable human suffering (especially of an intense sort) is an evil, or bad, thing.

And even if it were correct that we are all mistaken in thinking that such suffering is a bad thing, one wonders whether a benevolent God would have led (or allowed) us to be systematically mistaken about so fundamental a matter.  So much of our activity is directed towards preventing or evading or minimising suffering in our own lives, and in the lives of those who are dear to us.  What would child-rearing, for example, be like if we were persuaded that we had all along been mistaken in thinking that suffering was a bad thing?  Again, a rather large measure of our activity has been directed towards causing suffering in the lives of our enemies.  When we deliberately cause suffering in their lives, it is not because we suppose we are doing them a favour.

 

Another reason one might reject the second premiss is that one might think that such predicates as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘evil’, ‘right’, and ‘wrong’ do not, any of them, refer to objective properties of things in the world.  One might think attributions of such predicates to be entirely ‘subjective’.  Now is not the time to go into an extended analysis of objectivity and subjectivity as properties of attributions of predicates, or as properties of properties.  But suppose for a moment that such a person—you could, but needn’t, think of him as a scientific realist, i.e., someone who thinks that the only ultimate items in the world are the kinds of things that scientists (qua scientists) talk about, e.g., particles and fields and assemblages of these things, along with the properties that scientists find necessary to attribute to them, e.g., mass, extension, duration, and charge—does take the view that suffering is not objectively bad because nothing is objectively bad, or good, or right, or wrong.  Well, from this it will follow, straightaway, that God is not objectively good either, and that person will have done the work of the problem of evil, i.e., will have made it impossible for themselves, whether wittingly or otherwise, to consistently believe in the existence of an omnibenevolent (that is, entirely good) God, but will have done this in another way to that followed by the argument from evil.

But for those believers among you who, in spite of the above considerations, still feel some discomfort with words such as ‘evil’ (or ‘bad’) as applied to states of affairs, or else with the idea that we can actually know what states of affairs are evil, that is, for those believers who, I say, in spite of the above considerations, still want to reject the second premise and thereby retain a theistic conclusion, let me put a second version of the argument to you, which as rational beings you should feel a need to consider.  It goes like this:

    1. If there were a God who was completely caring, and all-powerful, and  all-knowing, then there would be no suffering in the world. 

      2.   There is suffering in the world.

      3.   Therefore, such a God does not exist.

Here, the evaluative word ‘evil’ has been replaced with the non-evaluative but descriptive word ‘suffering’, and the evaluative word ‘good’ has been replaced with the descriptive word ‘caring’.  While there might be some grounds for denying that, objectively speaking, there is evil in the world, it seems impossible for anyone with their head out of the sand to deny that there is suffering in the world.  Hence this version of the second premise seems absolutely undeniable.  Furthermore, this second version of the first premise seems at least as strong as the first version of the first premise.  And, of course, formally, the argument retains the same shape, and hence is valid. 

But it is time to turn our attention to the first premise in one or other of its versions.

Sometimes those who reject the first premise do so on the grounds that it is other people who bring evil or suffering to others, not God.  And that people are free to do good or bad.  If they choose to do bad, that is not God’s fault, unless one is actually going to defend the view that God would have done better to create a race of completely good automatons, i.e., beings who had no free will, who simply did what they were programmed to do.  

Now there are many things to be said in answer to this strategy.  For one thing, it is not clear that we do have free will.  If we do not, then clearly it would have been better had we been created so as to always do what we could to minimize suffering.  In any event, it is an assumption of the strategy that we do have free will.  

But let us now grant that assumption.  A second assumption is that it is better that we should be free and freely do the evil we have done (and foreseeably will do), than that we should not be free and that we should always act so as to minimize suffering.  Given the amount of suffering in the world, it is not clear that this is a proposition with no rational opposition.  Jeffrey Olen [2] puts the point rather crisply here, I think, asking:  “What would you be more horrified to learn—that you do not have free will, or that your entire family has been killed by a sniper?” (426)  

Thirdly, even if we were convinced of the not very convincing proposition that the world is in fact a better world for containing free beings such as our morally ambivalent selves, than that it should contain conscious beings like ourselves who were not free but were set by their designer always to minimize suffering, there is still the following thing to be said:  God, given that he is all powerful, could have created a race of beings who always strove to do good and who were free.  That is, God could have created a race of beings who always freely elected the good.  How is this possible?  Simple.  Some people, however few or many they be, are always well-motivated (and according to the theist, freely so).  Let only those kind be the zygotes of the world.  No other sort of human being is conceived in the womb.  God, all-knowing, is able to distinguish between (i) those potential concepti which if allowed to become actual, and to mature, would ultimately mature into beings who always freely elect the good on the one hand, and (ii) those who will frequently stray on the other.  The latter potential concepti are not allowed by God to become actual zygotes.  The problem is thereby nipped in the bud, so to speak. 

Fourthly, it is just not true that all human suffering is brought about by the actions of other human beings.  Some, indeed much, is brought about by nature or, as is sometimes said, by ‘acts of God’.  The problem of evil has as a significant component the problem of natural evil.  So-called ‘free will defences’, at least when the free will of other human beings is being referred to, are then completely beside the point.  It is true that theists with their backs to the wall do occasionally refer to the free will of more powerful, but non-divine, agencies as those which are responsible for so-called ‘natural evil’.  In other words, fallen angels are sometimes said (with a straight face) to be responsible, a dreary truth also reported by Olen.  But in an argument about the very existence of God, an argument where rational belief in God’s existence itself is at stake, it seems a flimsy defence indeed to ground it on the alleged existence of fallen angels.  Finally, even if there were such beings, the defence against the free will defence already discussed, i.e., the defence involving God’s foreknowledge of the would-be future evil deeds of such beings were they allowed to move from mere potential to robust actual existence, can be put to work here.  An all-powerful, all-knowing, and completely caring God would not have allowed any free angels into existence who would, were they allowed into existence, wreak havoc upon less powerful beings than themselves, viz., us, or at least not upon our young children. 

These considerations seem to me to be enormously powerful ones against the proposition that belief in an Anselmian God can be rational.  Some people might accept this perspective, but nevertheless believe that admitting the irrational into their lives in the matter of belief formation is a good thing.  Kierkegaard appears to have taken this turn. The problem with this doxastic move, this belief, is that such a believer will have left him- or herself no future possibility of appealing to reason to reject any potential belief whatsoever, on penalty of inconsistency.  A cognitive Pandora’s box will have been opened.  If reason is not to have the conclusive say, then there can be no conclusive reasons for rejecting any proposition.  Another move, which I think is pretty much the same sort of move, is to say that rational argument does not provide the only credible grounds for belief; in other words, it is to signal an attack on what may be regarded as the hegemonic presumptions of reason.  But, having said this, one would not be able to avail oneself of the activity of rationally arguing for it, for the content of what one has just said would undermine consistently engaging in that activity.   In response to this, and as a last ditch stand, one might take the view that consistency is not such a big deal in the matter of belief formation.  Well, the price the theistic piper is demanding for his comforting tune couldn’t get much higher.  Ratiocide is the price. 

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[1]  Any number of versions of the argument are to be found in the history of philosophy.  Here is Hume’s:

Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. 

Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. 

Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?

Spoken by ‘Philo’ in David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.  Philo cites Epicurus for the original thought.

[2]   The reference is to an introductory text, viz., Persons and their World:  An Introduction to Philosophy, by Jeffrey Olen, Random House (1983)