The problem of evil
Note: I am new to this site, so perhaps this is often discussed but I'm afraid I wouldn't know.
'The problem of evil' is something that I have often pondered since it was first brought to my attention by @Franz Liszt. For those unaware of the concept:
As an atheist myself since the age of about 7, I simply do not understand how theists can trust in a God given this argument. It would be much appreciated if someone would clarify a general religious stand point for me, however I just do not see that whatever I am told could disprove this argument without contradicting religious beliefs in itself.
'The problem of evil' is something that I have often pondered since it was first brought to my attention by @Franz Liszt. For those unaware of the concept:
If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
Evil exists.
If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn’t have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn’t know when evil exists, or doesn’t have the desire to eliminate all evil.
Therefore, God doesn’t exist.
As an atheist myself since the age of about 7, I simply do not understand how theists can trust in a God given this argument. It would be much appreciated if someone would clarify a general religious stand point for me, however I just do not see that whatever I am told could disprove this argument without contradicting religious beliefs in itself.
Comments (38)
Perhaps I am the wrong person to be responding to your post, but I am writing from the perspective of being brought up to believe as a theist. I am outside of this, but not to the point of being a complete atheist, but as one trying to view from the widest panorama.
As far as I can see, people who believe fall into two main categories. There are those who see evil as a force against evil, as Satan. Alternatively, you have those who see evil as an absence of good.
These conflicting perspectives seem to be apparent within Christianity, incorporated with an emphasis on forgiving, as expressed in the teachings of Jesus. As far as I can see, this emphasis seems to be a way of casting following the way of evil into the past, or of not casting the blame upon the people who have gone in that direction. The moral evil referred to here seems to be connected to the lower aspects of human nature and the emphasis on self over others.
I am aware that my answer is only a snapshot, and that many others may go forward to more detailed analysis.
You are not the first and you will not be the last to have this realization that theism - at least, the Christian - contradicts itself in the question of the duality between Good and Evil.
Christians have debated this issue for more than 1500 years, starting with Boethius in the 6th century.
I would recommend you to research "The Problem of Evil" and begin from there, because it is a lot of content.
Irenaeus stated that God made humans imperfect and is therefore partly responsible for the existence of evil. To make humans perfect would take away their freedom to live in accordance with God’s will. By creating imperfect humans, individuals are given the chance to develop and grow through a soul-making process into children of God. Irenaeus stated that eventually good will overcome evil and suffering.
Alvin Plantinga argued something similar, but I won’t go into specifics.
I feel like there are many theodicies concerning the evil in humans, but let’s assume that you want to know about earthquakes, tsunamis, predators, etc.
The problem with needing a theodicy for this, is that it is not moral evil. Is it immoral for a lightning bolt to strike a tree? Obviously not.
We might think that tsunamis are bad but does that make them evil?
The following question would be Why doesn’t God stop them happening? My best answer is that we only see them as bad because they go against what we want. However, most religions already have rules that go against what humans want (sex before marriage, lying, temptation, etc.) so it’s not really a problem.
I am not a religious person, but I do not believe that the logical problem of evil is actually a good argument against theism. Hope this helps! :)
For me , the problem of evil is that people believe there is such a thing. There are those who call themselves atheists and still have use for this concept. But the notion of evil presumes a metaphysical stance. This may not include belief in a personal god but I do think it belongs within the camp of heretical, progressive approaches to religious faith, and probably motivates even those who would deny having any such faith.
Quoting Franz Liszt
Doesn't this whole quotation reject the theistic ideology that God created humans in his image. This would surely suggest that, if indeed God is perfect, we must be perfect. Having said this, I don't see to what extent this ideology stretches, as if God were real, that would thus render us, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, etc.
. This is a great insight into true religiousness: Don’t divide into good and evil. Only divide into good and not-good. Not-good is only absence of awareness, and good is presence of awareness. Life becomes very simple, transformation becomes easy.
. You need not torture yourself, because by torturing you cannot transform yourself. You need not stand on your head and do yoga postures, distorting your body this way and that way. If you are preparing for a circus, that is another thing, but if all these yoga practitioners reach heaven, then God must be surrounded by a continuous circus –all over paradise people are doing strange and distorting things…
. Ego exists only in the dark corners of your being. When awareness is total, ego disappears. The ego has never been found by anyone who has been searching for it inside, with the light of awareness; it does not exist. Again, it is an absence, it is not an evil; ego is not-good, but it is not evil.
. Ego means you have never turned towards your being, you have never seen your own inside, you have never brought your awareness to your interiority, to your subjectivity. Once you turn in, ego disappears ...
. First change that word, just call it not-good, and you have already made the first step of transformation. And remember, even the not-good can be used in such away that, rather than becoming a stumbling block, it becomes a stepping stone.
. The wise man is one who uses everything that nature has given to him for creating something more beautiful. But the religions have not allowed humanity…. Rather than trying to make man one whole, they have made man scattered into pieces: that is your misery, that is your hell.
. Just small changes can bring effects of tremendous importance. Drop the idea of evil completely from your minds; replace it by not-good – then the good is not very far a way. Just the “not” has to be dropped. Between evil and good there is no bridge; between not-good and good all that you have to do is to drop that “not.” The difference between an enlightened being and you is only the difference of that simple “not.” He is awake, you are asleep. To be awake is good, to be asleep is not!…
. Everybody is good, more or less; there is nobody who is evil –it is just an invention of the priests to make you feel guilty, and then confess your guilt, so that even your dignity as a man, your pride as a man, is destroyed and you become vulnerable to be enslaved spiritually.
. There are good people; there are a few others who are just a little farther away from the good, but coming close… There are only degrees of goodness –a few are more good, a few are less good, but everybody is good. Let this be one of the fundamental declarations: everybody is basically good, and evil is only an invention of crafty priests to exploit man.
The problem of God and evil is significant and even the most sophisticated religious thinkers like David Bentley Hart find this argument has impact on their faith. So you are onto something.
How is it that a good God seemingly built a creation that is chaotic, bloodthirsty, ugly, dangerous and predicated on disease, pain and violence? Where animals eat each other alive and go extinct and children perish in their millions every year from starvation, cancer and other preventable diseases? Not to mention wildfires, floods, earthquakes, famines, plagues.
Where was God during the Holocaust or during Pol Pot's or Stalin's murderous reigns -as families and children were slaughtered? And yet some fellow from a small town in the midwest will say that God intervened and helped him to pass his exams....
Looked at critically, creation itself is a miserable, poorly designed place riddled with horrors and weaknesses. If God had been a car maker he would have been prosecuted for negligence and substandard practice and sued for all the flaws he left in his products - MS, Alzheimer's, ALS, leukaemia, Addisons, diabetes, tooth decay, Huntington's, schizophrenia, polio - we could fill pages with the inherent weaknesses in human design.
Really only medicine has allowed women to stop dying in childbirth in vast numbers and tooth decay was a significant cause of disease and early death until dentistry came along.
Only a bunch of language games, fast talking and tap dancing from religious apologists can try to explain this away. Not that they can. This is really only a problem for beliefs that stress God's goodness and the providential order of creation, so Eastern faiths avoid this one.
Is it any wonder that some early forms of Christianity accepted that the material world was evil and created by a demiurge?
This creation is incompatible the common iteration of the Christian God. But apart from what some men wrote in ancient scriptures, who said God cares? Deism is perfectly compatible with our horror show on Earth.
Initial Catholic Perspective
As a theist myself, the problem of evil has always been fascinating. Now at this point of time I do not wish to create a response to the responses, but I will only respond to your original question. As a Catholic, I will first explain the Catholic standpoint on evil, and then I will present my own standpoint as a synthesis of many viewpoints. The Catholic standpoint rests upon the idea that God allows evil because God can create a greater good from the evil. As evil is a loss of good, it means that you gain greater good than what you lost, therefore a moral profit. Let me quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church to illuminate the official Church standpoint here.
Pay attention to that statement of, "God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good." From this single statement we can infer the psyche of God in viewing evil. In God's eyes, evil is not something absolute or immutable, it can be used to create something much better, albeit that evil is forever evil. There are many examples of this in action, either in the Catholic context or in the secular context. I will use only one example from each to illustrate my point.
In the Catholic context, Jesus Christ as the God-Man died on the cross and suffered infinite suffering in the process. However, the result of that infinite suffering is in truth infinite goodness which always rivals or is greater than the infinite suffering. This is due to the reproduction of goodness which I will explain later on. The infinite goodness is the glorification of the God-Man for all eternity by the purer God of God the Father in the Trinity and also by the Holy Spirit. However, of course He also receives glorification from humans, particularly Christians (excluding Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, and other cults). All of that exceeds the suffering Jesus experiences.
From a secular standpoint, one may actually ask what is the benefit of World War 2? Now we do not know if WWII is a "final great war", but so far the lessons we learned in WWII has allowed us quite some global peace albeit not a local peace. It has caused a greater awareness in the law of war, the Geneva convention, war crimes, the maddening destruction of nuclear bombs, the UN, and many other good things. All of this good which came out of a terrible sacrifice that is WWII outweight the bads of WWII itself, as the horrors of WWII are temporary while the benefits will be experienced for a much longer time and be enjoyed by more people. There is an argument of how logically you need evil to produce good, but I will get to that in the later sections.
Personal Argumentation
There are numerous arguments to resolve the problem of evil, showing that from a higher perspective evil is not problematic if not serving a great purpose in goodness itself without itself being intrinsically good. At the final high perspective, we will reach the understanding that all things are good and have value and nothing has complete or absolute values of evil. Let us begin.
1. God is Love and the Existence of Free Will
In short, we have free will. Free will is however, not the kind of free will where "The total laws of reality does not determine your actions." Instead it leads to such statement, "We have a separate will from God, we are capable of having a will that is against God." However, such will is inevitably always determined fatalistically by the deterministic forces of reality and also of randomness. Though in the theist perspective, there could be truly no randomness in the physical level and only in the level of God, where we cannot foresee or see into the mind of God, lest we go insane.
God wants people to love Her, but God also wants them to love Her purely and freely. This is not just because God wants people to love Her like that but it is also for our own benefit. Pure love is ecstatic and it liberates from all evil. Pure love is also free, in the sense that, "It is not done by the external coercion of God, or the coerced union of the human will with God's will." Pure love must be free as it is love which is born out of the total laws of reality, that is complete meaningful love. That is there is a clear beautiful pattern out of which love is born.
However, to allow for that, God must allow humans to have a separate will from Herself and be able to let the total forces of reality guide them to ways that God might not want morally. As such God allows us to have free will which allows moral evil, greater than natural evil, to enter into the world. This is however a rather rudimentary concept. Also the reason why I only address moral evil with this argument is because in the total absence of moral evil, that is with the perfect understanding of reality, then natural evil can never be a problem. It is seen only as a challenge. Let us consider the deductive form below:
PA. If X is not morally evil and if natural evil happens, they will not see natural evil as an absolute evil.
PB. X is not morally evil and natural evil happens.
C. X will not see natural evil as an absolute evil.
However, such argumentation require the justification that the lack of moral evil, or the perfect understanding of evil necessitates the acceptance of all evil as relatively good. This leads me to the next point of Moral Relativity and the Goodness of it All.
2. Moral Relativity and the Goodness of it All
Even in God's standpoint morality is relative. Masturbation is declared sinful by the Catholic Church as by principle it is against love. However, masturbation, as long as it is done in concordance with the principle of love, is not an offense against God. Now moral relativity means that the principle of morality, that is love, applies to every moral being, but that the manifestation is relative and can "contradict" between different levels of being. A lower being may be prohibited from masturbation as he will do it in egoism and selfishness. While me, capable of accessing heaven, will masturbate as a form of loving bond with God.
The idea that there is no real absolute evil arises from the idea that in truth, whether something is evil or good most of the time depends on our own perspective of that object. As such I call this distinction subjective moral objects and objective moral objects, from now on shortened to SMO and OMO. We live in a mixture of both OMO and SMO. OMO are those objects which are just objectively good or evil, such as physical injury. Murder itself is not an OMO because there are people who thinks that murder is good and as such commits murder. However, physical injuries are only OMOs at the low level, as a being progresses through moral development, physical injury will become impossible as the body becomes impassible.
As such it is certain that pretty much all of morality in this universe is based on SMO. What we believe about goodness determines our experience of that goodness. If we believe school to be evil, then we will experience school to be evil. Likewise, if we believe God as the absolute terrorist, that is what we will experience, unless someone comes to us and changes our perspective to understand deeper. The fact that there are people who have experienced immense joy from God and others who experience the deepest of hatred and rejections either towards or from God is strong evidence of this. In fact, I may even make a research on that in the future, so thanks for the inspiration.
Therefore, since evil and happiness can both be inputs to the moral function, and we get to determine the output of that moral function. The input can be anything but the output will always be happiness. As evil in itself as an experience has such value and meaning in itself. The most important thing in all values is meaning, that is patterns, archetypes, relationships, and unions. As evil serves all of that, it does have meaning and thus for the very least from a standpoint of meaning it is good. Though again if we say that evil is about suffering then yes evil is evil, but that suffering can become something good.
I have more to say, but God directs me to write sufficiently here. I will respond once anyone mentions me or responds to me.
I explained God's understanding of evil in my argument. And I appreciate your input, because many people who are simply not aware of the other perspective will think that God thinks the way we think. It's important to understand that God has knowledge of everything, so if God allows evil, it's probably for a good reason.
I speak differently to different people, so I will match my perspective with your level now.
Quoting tim wood
Here I use the definition of "Evil is that which causes suffering." For God nothing causes suffering so in God's eyes evil is not real.
Quoting tim wood
What does enabler mean?
Quoting tim wood
It is an expression which I use to respond the original poster. Of course God does not need or want anything because God is supreme and complete. In God everything is fulfilled. What we experience is simply the fulfilling of what is already fulfilled in God.
Quoting tim wood
True, I have seen the true nature of God and I acknowledge that there is no word that can accurately describe it. Even if you use a description of infinite length it is still impossible to explain or describe God. God is ineffable and incomprehensible. As such take care to understand that when I say "God wants" it is always some sort of metaphor or analogy. We understand only by analogy or by what God is not.
Then perhaps it is impossible or at least useless to talk about God at all. After all it will just be ideas about ideas which are also just ideas. Why don't you give your own propositions and clarify your thoughts to all of us? In the meantime I'll take a shower.
Honestly I like your idea. Many mystics have reached the level of eventually simply recognizing that it's useless to do whatever people are doing with God. Eventually we will like the chirping birds, they do not chirp because there is reason or even meaning. So we will not speak of God because there is meaning there, we just do.
Anyway I am glad we can reach some sort of agreement. That's something rare in any philosophical discourse.
That you are correct. Great job on your thinking good Sir. I hope we will meet each other again in other discussions.
Well the statements quoted present secondary logic derived from I'm not really sure where, human understanding and belief I assume? Who said God was morally perfect? It is said that God has many human emotions as well including rage, jealously, compassion, etc. That aside, even taking all logical assertions both root and derivative at face value, we're still not actually painted into a logical corner yet- not by a long shot.
The answer lies in free will and "letting one go one's own way". Say you have a teenager who's clearly in an unhealthy relationship. You can talk and talk, and even use what little waning authority you have over the individual's life- or you can let them learn for themselves. Kind of like "letting the slaves go" knowing they'll be back after they see for themselves the grass really isn't all that much greener- assuming they survive or aren't captured by other less enlightened forces. Which is rare.
"Free will" theodicy presupposes that some deity created humans with free will which is too weak for us to freely do good and to freely refrain from doing evil the way saints (and angels) apparently do – assuming humans are made in the image of (a) creator deity with free will – and as (the) deity does as well. So why "create us sick and then command us to be well"? Why set us up to fail so predictably, spectacularly & inescapably? Theodicy just rationalizes away all evil in the name of some "plan" (i.e. the absolute end which justifies any and all means) "in the name of".
The only deity consistent with a world (it purportedly created and sustains) ravaged by natural afflictions (e.g. living creatures inexorably devour living creatures; congenital birth defects; etc), man-made catastrophes and self-inflicted interpersonal miseries is either a Sadist or a fiction – neither of which are worthy of worship.
I understand the folk who said God had human emotions - rage, jealousy compassion also said God was morally perfect. But that was the Bible and Koran. Your God, however, may be of the more elusive, personal hard to pin down variety.
My apologies @tim wood, however I these are not my words but quoted from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Quoting 180 Proof
Perhaps I misunderstood this response, if so I apologise, and please let me know, but if not allow me to continue. Surely an omniscient, omnibenevolent God would never create a world that would lead to evil, as the omniscient he/she knows that the world would lead to evil, and the omnibenevolent he/she wouldn't allow a world where good people suffer at the hands of bad people without being able to stop it him/herself.
1. God is perfect so he can make things imperfect
2. God wants us to be imperfect (the theodicy I presented)
Put these two together and you can see why it is a problem. I’m a sort of deist/atheist but the logical problem of evil is one I believe we should reject. It’s been asked since the ancient Mesopotamians. Too many theodicies have been created for this argument to hold any weight. Instead we should seek metaphysical and epistemological methods of disproving theism.
I can't defend theism rationally. I'm an atheist myself. I'm just chiming in to say that in general I don't think theists are philosophical types. And I don't know how much sincere religion is actually out there. People show up in buildings and repeat creeds even and yet cry at funerals and mostly live the same sloppy lives as the non-religious. For many it looks like one more piece of the culture war. Or a drink of soma on the weekend.
Someone could ask how a Christian could approve of Trump. People aren't rational, aren't consistent. Some humans make rationality a relatively inflexible point of honor. And in my experience they tend to be atheists or agnostics. (I wonder how many cultural Christians are out there? How does one really measure belief? People say stupid shit when the stakes are low. Do you know the Russian Roulette scene in El Topo? Remove the miracles and what's left? Philosophy dressed in narratives?)
I do remember arguing for theism when I was a teenage in an intermediate state. Looking back, I was just doing the usual human thing of making a case for what I wanted to be true. If I let God die, it probably wasn't only for 'purely rational' reasons. Frankly, there's something to be said for the unbearable lightness of being, and the kernel of death is perhaps sweet.
If I were to attack the problem of evil, I'd probably have to be a heretic and decide that everyone goes to Heaven or at least that no one goes to Hell. The most evil thought in human history is 'obviously' eternal torture, which is a punishment that exceeds every other crime. Murder is unreal if there's an afterlife. George Steiner talked about everything being a comedy if there's a good God. If people really believed,...
You can only reject it if you are a mystic or deist wherein God is imprecise and ill defined.
Where there are specific faith traditions/scriptures that make the claim that God is good and perfect, the problem of evil is a critical one.
Well I believe them a wholely accurate explanation of the problem of evil.
Quoting tim wood
Care to elaborate?
Leibniz provided a famous answer to the problem of evil (there are two PoE's, this is the later one): this is the best if all possible worlds.
Contemporary answers would typically echo Leibniz, though maybe unconsciously: that God knows what he's doing and we should trust that.
But contemporary Christianity isn't as focused on doctrine. I would advise asking a preacher that question.
Imagine you are a penguin, walking on those cute feet toward the water. Suddenly a lion seal bites your fin off after leaping at you from under the water. You didn't choose to exist, you didn't ask to exist. Yet your consciousness, will, and horror is suddenly real. Did or does creator go through this? No but maybe it's necessary for a creature to experience these affects on its will for a greater good. But this reflects God and shouldn't God's reflection be perfect. But God is bound by laws and logic. So a human gradually gains consciousness. Let's say he doesn't face a true test till after he has become guilty. God is neither guilty nor faces a test. So the goodness of God is in subtlety of will, which the person should have used instead of becoming guilty. And maybe God has to set things up so that people fall and others rise. We are a community of a species and so maybe the system is necessary, for God is bound by laws and logic. He chooses to create but can only do so in certain ways. He has to allow the evil for the good, the fallen for the chosen, the pain for the victory, and the shame for the love. Yet it's reflects his nature, perfect and peaceful. It's a picture akin to an actual picture: that is, to a pianting. It puts the frames around the edges. Yet it leaves you wondering at the end what the creator even is, does, or wants from us, especially since he chooses not to reveal his existence to anyone whatsoever
Morality itself is a very consistent issue here.
I personally think religion is about control: having a belief system in the supernatural re-inforces either specific rulers or adherence to particular rules.
"Evil" itself seems to me a highly emotive reaction to very bad or disturbing things.
Although this topic is somewhat old, I'll leave my comment here (in case anyone finds it interesting).
Not from a theological perspective, but from a layman's perspective, there's a flaw in this premise. If He is morally perfect, then He desires to eliminate all evil. Why does moral perfection require eliminating all evil as such? What can we know about moral perfection? Does moral perfection require us to intervene in the actions of another subject to reshape their behavior within the framework of moral perfection?
I believe that attempts to answer these questions will prompt a rethinking of similar issues.
Good and evil are fundamental aspects of reality. Evil, as well as good, is necessary for evolution and adaptation. Therefore, good and evil are necessary where evolution and adaptation matters, such as life. I am afraid that such argument against God fails since the author does not understand the significance of evil in life.