THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

What is meant by ‘evil’?

In Philosophy, what we mean by evil is any pain or suffering experienced by sentient beings.

There are two distinct types of evil – natural and moral.

Natural/ physical evil

This refers to the pain and suffering of sentient beings that occurs independently of human actions and is caused by natural events and processes.

Physical events such as earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, floods, fires, famine and diseases such as cancer or AIDs are all examples of natural evil.

Moral evil

This refers to the pain and suffering of sentient beings that occurs because of human actions. Moral evil wouldn’t have happened naturally- a human chooses to carry out evil actions towards others.

Examples range from bullying and abuse to assault, murder, rape, war and genocide.

Although the two types of evil are usually viewed as completely separate, there are some cases that are slightly more complex. For example, famine might be seen as natural, but if it was caused

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by people overfarming or destroying the environment, then it might also be seen as moral evil.Why is evil a problem?

Evil is a problem for religious believers because it seems incompatible with the divine attributes. If there is a God who created the world and is omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent, then a problem occurs when we try to account for the existence of evil.

Throughout history, the problem of evil has been one of the biggest reasons for people not to believe in God (Hume called it “the rock of atheism”. One of the clearest explanations of the problem comes from Mackie, who describes it as an inconsistent triad.

The Inconsistent Triad

These three elements are said to be inconsistent because it seems that only two of them can be true- they can’t all be true at once.

“God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them are true the third would be false… A good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can… the proposition that a good omnipotent thing exists, and that evil exists, are incompatible.”

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Problem of Evil

Evil exists

God is omnipotentGod is benevolent

Mackie

We can set out the problem as a philosophical argument like this:

1. A benevolent God would want to eliminate evil2. An omnipotent God would be able to eliminate evil3. Therefore if an omnipotent benevolent God exists then evil

would not exist4. Evil does exist5. Therefore an omnipotent benevolent God does not exist

So, the argument suggests to the believer that either God doesn’t exist, or he doesn’t have all of these properties.

To maintain belief in God, the theist must either accept that God doesn’t have these properties, or object to one of the other premises.

Very few, if any, people would deny that premise 4 is true, because we see evil all around us. Premise 2 also seems obviously true, because if he couldn’t stop evil then he wouldn’t be all-powerful.Points 3 and 5 are both conclusions which follow from the premises.So the only premise that can reasonably be objected to is 1. This is where most believers start when trying to respond to the problem of evil.

Resolving the problem of evil

Since the problem of evil was first posed, theists have tried to resolve it without abandoning their belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God. There have been many proposed solutions to the problem of evil, but we will concentrate on these two:

God allows evil because it leads to greater good

Evil is the responsibility of humans, not God Philosophy of Religion 2 – The

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These kind of solutions are known as theodicies.

Theodicy

A proposed solution to the problem of evil which explains how an all-loving God can choose to allow pain and suffering

THE FREE WILL DEFENCEThis defence argues that God does exist and is omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent, but that the enormity of pain and suffering is the consequence of an even greater good – namely humans having free will.

Plantinga puts forward a version of the argument:

1. A world with creatures who are free is more valuable than a world containing no free creatures at all.

2. God can create free creatures, but he cannot cause them to do what is morally right.

3. So God created a world with free creatures capable of doing both what is morally right and what is morally evil.

4. Some humans use their freedom to do evil rather than good.5. It is better for the world to have free humans and some evil

than no evil and no freedom.6. Therefore, God is still all-loving, but humans are the source

of moral evil.

So, the fact that God does not prevent evil does not mean he lacks omnipotence or benevolence. God’s goodness is what led him to create a world with creatures who had freedom (rather than creatures who were robots), and God’s omnipotence gave him the power to actually create such a world. He has the power to be able to prevent evil, but the only way to do this is to remove free will. But removing free choice would remove the possibility for humans to be morally good. Because he is benevolent, he wants humans

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to be good, so he chooses to allow some evil because it is necessary for moral goodness.

ISSUES ARISING WITH THE FREE WILL DEFENCE

Criticism 1 – natural evil

The Free Will defence only seems to account for moral evil; what about physical or natural evil? After all, humans are not responsible for natural events. Animals can cause immense pain and suffering to people and each other (and they have done since before humans existed). So there is lots of evil in the world that is not the responsibility of humans, and is therefore not accounted for by the free will defence.

ResponseSome believers respond to this by claiming that all natural evil is actually the result of free creatures. St Augustine argued that God created the natural world perfectly, but when Adam and Eve sinned, the result of this was to bring pain and suffering into the world.Others claim that angels with free will chose to rebel against God (such as Satan) and this resulted in natural evil.

Many believers today would not accept this kind of response though, because it is requires belief in either a literal interpretation of Bible or the story of Satan. It also seems unfair to punish the whole world for the disobedience of a few. Both ideas: of a punishing and unforgiving God, or a God that can be overpowered by Satan do not sit well with the idea that God is omni-benevolent.

So the Free Will defence is primarily a defence against the existence of moral evil, not natural evil.

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Criticism 2 – naturally good, free people

Antony Flew criticises the Free Will defence on the basis that God could have made people who were free, but always chose the good, or right thing to do. His criticism is based on the idea that philosophers like Plantinga have a limited idea of free will. Plantinga assumes that in order to be capable of sometimes choosing to do evil, we have to actually choose to do evil sometimes.

For Flew, freely chosen actions are ones that have their causes within the persons themselves, rather than externally. For example, when you have the chance to marry the person you love, your decision to do so will ultimately stem from the type of person you are. As long as your choice to marry in internal to you, that is to say, powered by your own character and desires, then it is freely chosen.

Flew then goes on to say that God could have created a possible world in which all humans had a nature that was good, and yet in which they were free in Flew’s sense. In such a world, humans would always freely choose to do the right thing. And such a world would surely be a better one than this.

1. It is possible for people to have the choice to do evil, and yet to always choose to be God

2. They are freely choosing so long as there are no external forces influencing their decision

3. God could have created a world in which people were naturally good, and always chose the good

4. People do not always choose the Good5. Therefore either God is not omnipotent, is not

omni-benevolent, or does not exist.

ResponseWhat would be the difference between ‘naturally good’ people, and automata or puppets who had been created always to act in a good way? It is important to religious believers that God gave them the freedom

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to choose for themselves what kind of person to be. But, in this possible world, God seems to have manipulated humans in order to bring about his desired results. Imagine a hypnotist persuading someone they were in

Criticism 3 - How good is free will?

It is central to the free will defence that free will is a great good, in order for it to justify all the evil that occurs. However, we can object that even if free will is a great good, that doesn’t mean we should never interfere with it. If we see someone about to commit a murder, we could step in and prevent it without taking away their free will. They still freely chose to act, we just prevented the pain caused by their decision. The existence and goodness of free will could be compatible with interfering with it. So why doesn’t God prevent evil actions?

Response

If God were to intervene whenever someone chose to do evil, he would be interfering very often, which would undermine our sense of free will. Swinburne argues that a world in which we knew we couldn’t cause harm to each other would be a ‘toy world’. We would not take responsibility for our actions or for each other’s well-being.

Plantinga himself admits that his position is not a proof that God’s existence is compatible with evil. He calls it ‘a weak theodicy’, because it doesn’t show that they definitely co-exist, but it shows that they are not incompatible.

THE SOUL-MAKING THEODICY

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This was originally proposed by Irenaeus in the 5th Century (so it is also known as the Irenaean theodicy) and is based on the idea that evil is necessary for developing our souls. More recently, it has been developed and defended by John Hick.

According to this theodicy, human beings are created as imperfect, raw material, which have to be improved and matured through the challenges of evil. When we face these evils and develop as people, eventually we will arrive at a proper relationship with God, ready to meet him in the next life.

There are certain good qualities that God wants us to have, but which aren’t attainable without some painful experiences. For example, you can’t develop the virtue of courage if you have never faced danger. We can’t learn forgiveness unless we have been badly treated. If God created a world which was pain-free, we would never be able to mature and develop spiritually. So God is still benevolent, and he allows us to experience pain precisely because he loves us.

Hick describes the world, which is full of natural and moral evil, as a “vale of soul-making”, a place which is perfectly designed for human souls to be developed. All examples of evil (both moral and natural) can be justified by their capacity to make us better people.

For this process of soul-making to work, we must have free will, so that we take responsibility for our choices and learn from them. It is also important that God maintains epistemic distance, which means he remains hidden from our understanding. We need to be ignorant of God and his purposes in order to suffer real pain.

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As an analogy, parents could avoid their children ever getting hurt by locking them in a padded room. But we wouldn’t think this was very loving because it is depriving them of the chance to play, learn and make friends. So loving parents knowingly allow their children to suffer (by letting them go on the swings for example), because they know that the benefits of going on the swing outweigh the pain they will experience when they inevitably fall off.

ISSUES ARISING WITH THE SOUL MAKING THEODICY

Criticism 1 – ready-made souls

Why couldn’t God create us good? Why do we need to become good? Hick responds that someone who has become good through confronting and dealing with evil ‘is good in a richer and more valuable sense’ than someone who is simply created good. Without the pain, we can’t be good in the right way.

Criticism 2 – animal suffering

A second objection is that this theodicy only deals with the suffering of beings who can grow spiritually. It doesn’t deal at all with the suffering of animals. One possible response is that animals have souls too, and can grow spiritually, but many religious traditions deny this.

Criticism 3 – scale and distribution of suffering

Even if some suffering is necessary for soul-making, a good God would surely limit the scale of suffering to the least amount possible. But some people seem to experience far more suffering than they can benefit from. Many people suffer terribly in a way that breaks their spirit, e.g. some children never recover from being abused; others suffer at the end of their lives when there is little time to develop further; people die prematurely, before they have a chance of spiritual growth. Similarly, some people who seem to need to grow spiritually don’t suffer much at all, but others who are already leading good lives suffer a great deal. If the point of evil is that people become morally good, the distribution of evil doesn’t seem to support this purpose.

Dostoyevsky put forward a series of particularly painful examples of evil in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. The problem Dostoyevsky poses is a question about whether the outcome justifies the method. For any theodicy that views the existence of

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evil as a means to an end we can ask ‘is the end worth it?’ In other words is God justified in creating a world that contains so much evil in order to attain perfection for all?

Response

Swinburne responds that if suffering was exactly matched to spiritual growth, and we could see and understand this in every case, then that would be a proof of the existence of God. Imagine such a world in which we knew on every occasion when someone suffered that it was for the best. We would need neither faith nor hope, both of which depend on uncertainty and unpredictability. But faith and hope are two central virtues, two ways in which souls grow spiritually. So for our souls to grow spiritually, it must look like the distribution and amount of evil are unfair or unjustified- God must maintain epistemic distance.

Criticism 4 – The Afterlife (Eschatological Reward)

Even if we do benefit from the evil we experience, it is clear that the reward does not take place in this life. For the soul-making theodicy to succeed it must establish the existence of an afterlife, or eschatological reward. For anyone unconvinced by the idea of an afterlife, the soul-making theodicy fails.

EschatologicalMeans to do with the afterlife

However, even if we accept the existence of the afterlife, it doesn’t seem to justify the evil that takes place in this life. For example, if I hit you and then give you £20, was it alright for me to hit you? Would it be alright if I gave you £1000? No, there is just something wrong with this way of thinking. At best, the money is compensation for something I did wrong, but it does not justify what I did. The same applies to thinking about evil. If God rewards those who deserve it by eternal life in heaven, this is at best a compensation for the unjust suffering they experienced in life. It does not make it morally good or justifiable that they suffered. A loving God would not act this way.

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Final Thoughts- Do either of these theodicies solve the problem of evil?- Can theists consistently believe in God’s properties when faced with evidence of evil in the world?

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