The Problem of Evil

The Problem of Evil Revisited.

The problem of evil is one of the greatest hindrances to religious faith on the planet. I wish to lay down some key ideas and explore this issue. We shall start with two basic arguments and explore all the ideas from there:

Number 1:

1. God created all that there is.
2. There is evil in the world.
3. Therefore God created evil.

This argument is clearly fallacious and easy to expose. The next one contains a higher level of difficulty.

Number 2:

1. God is omnipotent (all powerful).
2. God is omni-benevolent (all good)
3. There is evil in the world.
4. Either God wants the evil in the world or he doesn't.
5. God has not rid the world of evil.
6. This means that either he can't or chooses not to.
7. If he can't he is clearly not omnipotent.
8. If he can but does not He cannot be omni-benevolent

In defense of the conclusion in number eight, if you saw someone in a burning building about to catch on fire and had the ability to save them would you? Well, God has the ability to prevent all evils but chooses to let people burn in those fires countless times on a daily basis. How can an idle being be a God of love or all good? If you saw a child drowning in a pool would you jump in and try to save them? Of course you would as would every decent person or agent. God does not jump in on a daily basis and lets innumerable people die on a daily basis. It seems clear there is something wrong here.

Resolving the first Argument:

As previously stated, the first argument is fallacious and this is the reasoning why:

Is a gun evil ontologically (in itself)? I would have to say no. How could a gun be evil? It is just a collection of atoms and molecules without free agency. Is a gun used to shoot someone evil? No, a gun has no volition. It is simply stardust or molecules and compounds that act in accordance with chemical and physical laws. It makes no choices and is not conscious. A gun is not evil in itself any more than a rock, a comb, cocaine, a frying pan or pocket lint is. The evil does not lie in the gun but in the shooter. Should a person shoot and rob another person the evil lies in their action. The action was evil but the medium the action was carried out in or through is not evil. Evil is not a thing or being. It is a free will decision that is immoral. The evil lies in the shooters intent or purpose. Christians and theists in general define "good" as in accordance with God's will and "bad" as a non-conformity with God's will. Under such definitions it is clear that evil is "non-conformity between a person's will and God's will." Evil is clearly committed through free human agency.

It is important that evil is not a thing or being or the problem of evil would be insolvable. For there is the Creator and his creation. If evil is a thing or being then it was created by God. There is no way around that. But if evil is an act of a free will agent then God is off the hook. Christians who accept a literal Satan should also note that he was originally an angel of light. Satan is not evil in and of himself. He has fallen through free agency. All creation is good metaphysically or ontologically.

I have basically advocate the same notion Tacelli and Kreeft do in their handbook of Christian Apologetics. Their description is probably more lucid and better written so I include it here:

The stance of Kreeft and Tacelli on evil, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, pp 132-133:

Evil

The two most common misunderstandings about evil that make the problem more difficult than it needs to be are (1) the tendency to see evil as a being and (2) the confusion between two very different kinds of evil, physical and moral evil.

1. Evil is not a being, thing, substance or entity. This was Augustine's great breakthrough (Confessions) that liberated him from Manichaean dualism (the belief in two ultimate beings, one good, one evil). He realized that all being is good metaphysically, or ontologically, or in its being. For all being is either the Creator or his creature. He himself is good, and he declared everything he created good (Genesis 1). And that is all the being there is.

If evil were a being, the problem of evil would be insolvable, for then either God made it--and thus he is not all good--or else God did not make it--and thus he is not the all powerful creator of all things. But evil is not a thing. Things are not evil in themselves. For instance, a sword is not evil. Even the stroke of the sword that chops off your head is not evil in its being--in fact, unless it is a "good" stroke, it will not chop your head off. Where is the evil? Its in the will, the choice, the intent, the movement of the soul, which puts a wrong order into the physical world of things and acts: the order between the sword and an innocent's neck rather than a murderer's neck or an innocent's bonds.

Even the devil is good in his being. He is a good thing gone bad--in fact, a very good thing gone very bad. If he had not had the greatest ontological goodness (goodness in his being) of a powerful mind and will, he could never become as morally corrupt as he is. "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." Corruptio optimi pessima, "the corruption of the best things are the worst things." To be morally bad you must first be ontologically good.

Even physical evil is not a thing. The lack of power in a paralyzed limb is physical evil, but it is not a thing, like another limb. Blindness is a physical evil, but it is not a thing, like an eye. The cataract that causes the evil is not itself the evil.

Is evil then merely subjective? A fantasy, an illusion? . . . Evil is real, but it is not a real thing. It is not subjective, but it is not a substance. Augustine defines evil as disordered love, disordered will. It is a wrong relationship, a nonconformity between our will and God's will.

This brings us back to our question asking us if God "created" evil. Obviously this is nonsensical. Evil is not "created". Evil cannot be "created" by definition. Evil is "performed" or "committed." This type of evil that we are referring to is usually called moral-ethical evil. God did not "create" moral ethical evil. It is a category mistake to ask that. Moral-ethical evil is "performed", not "created."

Isaiah 45:7 A Rebuttal to my Argument

One possible rebuttal to this is Isaiah 45:7 which, in the KJV reads:

" I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

I am not a Biblical literalist but I will work with the verse. This seems to be in direct opposition to what I argued evil was up above. God plainly states that He "creates" evil. This is unqualified though as "evil" can mean different things. If God is saying he creates moral-ethical evil then he is clearly speaking nonsense as the term "create evil" is nonsensical and meaningless. But there is another common definition of evil which is used in other translations like the NIV which has Is 45:7 as:

"I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD , do all these things."

This may seem like skirting the issue but it is not. We cannot fallaciously assume the word "evil" is always used with the same meaning. God may be using it differently than we are here and if you were to look up evil in a dictionary "disaster" would be one of the definitions. God is not claiming to have nonsensically created moral-ethical evil but is saying that he has created calamity or disaster. Glenn Miller has put together a fine argument that this is the case here and I refer those skeptical of the "calamity definition" there.

So we see that God did not "create evil" (a meaningless and nonsensical phrase). Evil is an action committed by a moral agent with free will. Evil is a non-conformity between a person's will and God's will.

Implications of this Definition

This definition may create problems for conservative Christians, however, who posit that we are born with a sin nature stemming from the idea of original sin. A standard understanding may be along the lines of :

"A corruption has been passed down to us so that no human being born since the Fall, save Jesus has been untainted by the original sin. This means that unlike the first humans, we cannot, of our own volition, choose to please God. We will, without His direct help (through the Holy Spirit) always choose to disobey Him through sin."

I see very problematic moral implications with this view and it seems like the game is rigged but I will try not to get sidetracked by those issues and stay on topic.

Any argument that we are born with a sin nature or that sin is passed down through generations is false. We cannot be "born into sin" or with a sin nature. Sin is "committed" or "performed". It cannot be "created" or "passed" on. And even if it could, this would make sin a thing or being and this would make the theodice problem insolvable. There is only the creator and his creation. If evil is a real ontological thing or being like a genetic disease or virus and not a choice of a sentient being then God is ultimately responsible for it. Plain and simple.

With that being said one person's sins do have an effect on others but Christians argue that the fall in the garden has universal application. That is something that makes no sense to us on a moral and logical level. It is conceivable that some "original sin" or our constant unfaithfulness to our Husband has made something spiritually amiss in the world but some sort of sin nature being passed down is a ludicrous notion.

Either we are left with an insolvable theodice problem or a nonsensical and meaningless doctrine which states we are "born" with a sin nature or that our sin nature is "passed" along.

This also renders verses like Romans 5:12 nonsensical when taken literally. It reads:

"Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned-"

How all sinned through Adam is a huge mystery. If Paul meant this factually and if we are to read it literally then he seems to have been stating something nonsensical. If sin is the intent of a person we could not have sinned through Adam. Adam's sin is his own just like my sin is my own sin. The fact that we are guilty and tainted by Adam's sin makes no sense to us. Some original sin proponents would not say we are not guilty because of Adam's sin, just tainted by it. They would further argue we are guilty if we sin, not because of some sin thousands of years ago in a garden in which we had nothing to do with. That is a more modest view but it does not escape the problems I outlined already. Also, others would not posit that Adam and Eve had to be literal persons. The point of the story is that there was a fall, humanity fell from some previous position. There are all sorts of positions within the Christian church on this but in the end I think verses like Deut 24:16 are more realistic:

"Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin."

That is how we understand the world to run. If there is a better way to define "sin/evil/good/bad" and other terms of that nature I would certainly like to know about it. If not the notion of original sin is nonsensical or creates an insolvable theodice poroblem unless redefined to mean something other than what the plain sense of the words indicate.

Addressing the Second Argument

The second argument seems much stronger on the surface. It also uses more key terms which need to be defined properly before proceeding. The first is omnipotence. I am going to be addressing this briefly as a full discussion of omnipotence deserves its own paper.

In short, omnipotence does not mean God can do anything. The Bible clearly states God cannot lie or even be tempted by sin. Ergo, the Christian canon itself argues against this uncritical definition of omnipotence. Now this does not mean there is an external force or rule God must obey. If God cannot lie, theologians will tell us it is because his nature prohibits it. Traditionally, that is what omnipotence entails; God can do anything consistent with his nature.

Let's see what we find in the Meriam and Webster dictionary online (www.m-w.com)

Omnipotence:
1 : the quality or state of being omnipotent
2 : an agency or force of unlimited power

Lets follow up on the first definition and check out "omnipotent":

1 often capitalized : ALMIGHTY 1
2 : having virtually unlimited authority or influence
3 obsolete : ARRANT

Looking up "Almighty yields:

1 often capitalized : having absolute power over all <Almighty God>
2 : relatively unlimited in power
3 : great in magnitude or seriousness

We see that despite what some argue, omnipotence must not mean "able to do anything" including create round triangles and squares without four 90° angles. For a good discussion on philosophical issues like "can God create a bigger rock then he can lift?" I recommend this article by Glenn Miller of the Thinktank.

I am comfortable with Greg Boyd's stance on omnipotence. This is a paraphrase of his comments on the issue in Letters From a Skeptic:

[paraphrased from Dr. Gregory Boyd in Letters From A Skeptic]

Before Creation, God was the only being in existence and thus had all the power that there was. He originally possessed all the power. He could use that power and what was there to oppose him?

But with the creation of free creatures, I maintain, God necessarily surrendered a degree of power. Or perhaps, it is better to say God delegated some of his power. Our freedom is a little bit of controlling power lent to us by God. God voluntarily gives us a portion of his power and thereby surrenders his opportunity to "always get his way." It has to be this way. For it is utterly impossible for God to always be in control and yet .allow free beings to exercise some control.

What is important to realize is that this surrender is a voluntary act of God. If there is a limit on God's power it is there by his decision, not some power outside of himself. If God at some point can't do something (e.g. rid the world of a particular evil) its only because he decided to create a world in which there would be times when he could do nothing. Only if some power outside of God limited God could he be said to not be omnipotent (all powerful). God is all powerful though now, he chooses not to be. The reason being that he desires a creation capable of love and it must be "free" (have some power of its own).

[/end paraphrase]

Those are pretty much my thoughts on omnipotence. Next we move on to omni-benevolence.

To call God omni-benevolent is to say he is all good. This is true by definition according to my explanation of the first argument. Good is defined in accordance with God's will. This means that God is omni-benevolent by definition and incapable of evil or sin as those are things defined as "being contrary to God's nature or will." I would say its true God does not want evil in the world and also true that God has not rid the world of evil. I would also say God is capable of ridding the world of evil but the cost of doing so is too high because it would take away our freedom.

As C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity on pages 52 and 53 said:
Is this state of affairs in accordance with God's will or not? If it is, He is a strange God, you will say: and if it is not, how can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power?
But anyone who has been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another. It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, "I'm not going to go and make you tidy the schoolroom every night. You've got to learn to keep it tidy on your own." Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate. That is against her will. She would prefer the children to be tidy. But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy. The same thing arises in any regiment, or trade union, or school. You make a thing voluntary and then half the people do not do it. That is not what you willed, but your will made it possible. . . . Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk. Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him. But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on. If God thinks this state of war in the universe is a price worth paying for free will--that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings--then we make take it it is worth paying.

I am basically advocating the free will defense. God wanted free creatures, not robots. He gave us true freedom and surrendered a degree of his own power over to us. We cannot be real creatures capable of true love, true goodness and true evil without free agency. If we do not have free will life loses all true meaning and value. So it is actually God's love or omni-benevolent nature which prevents him from removing the possibility of a sentient being from committing evil. God has given us freedom. We are free to choose good or bad, free to love or hate. Why doesn't God jump in and stop bad things before they happen? It would be violating our freedom and making us choose whatever God wanted rather than letting us choose on our own. I also refer you to Greg Boyd's discussion of this issue in Letters From a Skeptic which I put up here. It addresses a few notions and dilemmas not touched on here.

There is too much evil in the world for there to be a God

Some have put forth the argument that there is too much evil in the world for there to be an all good or omni-benevolent God. Ronald Tacelli and Peter Kreeft address part of this issue well in their Handbook of Christian Apologetics (pp. 123-124):

How much evil would be too much? Would a Holocaust of six million disprove God but not a Holocaust of six thousand? . . . How do we know how much evil is too much? These objectors seem to assume implicitly that since they cannot understand why so much evil is permitted, it could not possibly be permitted by God; that is, they assume that only the evil which they can understand as necessary or justified is compatible with God.

Obviously this objection is very subjective and has no real pull on a logical level.

Natural Evil. Hurricanes, Floods Mudslides, Droughts etc.

I find the problem of natural evil to be the hardest of the bunch. How do we explain natural disasters that kill people? Conservative Christians will usually posit that there was no death or natural disasters to worry about in the pre-fall garden of Eden. This is usually how the issue is resolved. By taking the fruit Adam and Eve brought sin and death into the world. From the discussion above I'd have to ask for a "definition" of sin and what exactly is mean but we can leave that alone for our purposes here and focus on a more fundamental problem. Notions of a pre-existent Garden or paradise on earth without death have long been defeated. Science is clear on this point. Nature is red in tooth and claw and it has been so since the beginning. The creation story cannot be factually and literally true. Despite the urgings of old earth creationists and young earth creationists, sober research demonstrates otherwise. For many Christians an appeal to a mythical garden-paradise is simply not an option. So we must seek another explanation. In reality this pre-death garden-paradise is not a reality for biblical literalists either. If Adam ate anything or walked on grass its hard to imagine cells would not die. The reality is that there was death long before humans arrived and there is no sign that the physical laws of the universe have ever changed. All Christians have to face this issue and if they don't, they cannot take science seriously.

So how do we explain hurricanes and other natural disasters which kill lots of people? There are a few explanations offered:

We were created with a temporary nature and live life as mortals in a universe governed by entropy. The world is not perfect. Anything God creates is not God which means imperfections and limitations are inherent in creation. "Any created thing must, for example possess a limited set of characteristics which rules out the possibility of it possessing other characteristics incompatible with these. But this can lead to some unfortunate consequences. The rock which holds you up must also be hard enough for you to stub your toe on it. The air which you breathe must also thin enough to allow you to fall through it when not supported by a hard surface. The water which quenches your thirst must also be dense enough so you can't breath in it, and so on. This dependability of the world which makes it possible for rational, morally responsible creatures to live works against us in certain circumstances. Indeed, every positive feature of any created entity is a potentially negative feature in certain circumstances." (Boyd, Ibid, p.35)

Another solution used in conjunction with the above view is spiritual warfare. If one believes in the existence of angels and demons, they note that human free wills and God are not the only beings which influence events on earth. Many Christians think we are in a state of spiritual warfare. Ephesians 6:10-19 is one scriptural example of this doctrine:

10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Many may find the notions of angels or demons childish or ludicrous in light of our post-enlightenment ideologies but pretty much every culture except our own has accepted their existence. This by no means proves their existence but neither does the fact that we've never seen a red guy running around with a tail and a pitchfork disprove their existence. Most Christians accept that Jesus performed exorcisms and that demons, angels, and spiritual warfare are a component of reality.

I think we all struggle with this question and maybe we don't have a perfect answer for it but I find the explanations when couple with evidences for God do suffice in resolving any reason for unbelief. 'This posture is not blind fideism but eminent reasonableness.' In fact it can be argued that evil is evidence for the validity of the Christian faith. Not many world views take evil seriously or understand it realistically or in a way in which we all live by. Christianity is one of the world views which does.

I do not wish to downplay the problem of evil here. I think evil should be a serious concern of us all and consoling grieving parents or loved ones with logical arguments such as the ones found in this paper is never a good idea. I put this paper up because I think all of us wrestle with the problem of evil from time to time or have in the past at least. I probably didn't answer all of your questions but hopefully it's some consolation that we are in a waiting period and that the problem was solved on a Roman cross 2000 years ago.