The Problem of Evil

The Basic Problem

The world we live in contains no small amount of "evil". Bad things happen. People are cruel, sometimes extremely so. And there are a variety of natural disasters that ruin and end people’s lives. True enough, lots of good things happen in this world as well. People can be very nice, and the weather can be beautiful. But evil, bad things do happen.

All this evil in the world naturally prompts a question for theists: Why would God let these things happen?

This question is at the heart of the Problem of Evil. The Problem of Evil attempts to show that there is a tension between God (at least on a certain conception) and the presence of evil in the world.

Many religions hold that god is a symbol of perfection. God is not just a powerful force that set the world spinning, God is a source of moral authority and greatness. The Problem of Evil focuses specifically on this idea about God. More precisely, the Problem of Evil takes issue with the following conception of God.

God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-caring.

The basic argument against such a god’s existence is that it seems to be in tension with the fact that:

Evil exists.

“Evil”

It's worth pausing for a second on the claim that "evil exists". When the PoE calls our attention to the large amount of “evil” in the world, they seem to have in mind those events which cause needless sufferring. Such examples include:

• "Human Evil". Here, the proponent of the PoE has in mind the large number of bad things people do to each other. Some people inflict pain, sufferring and torture on others.
  

• "Natural Evil". Here, the proponent of the PoE has in mind things like natural disasters (e.g. the Lisbon earthquake). Now, it may seem odd to label these things "evil". (After all, we don't scold an earthquake or hold a hurricane morally responsible for its actions.) But as I described in class, I don't think the issue of how to label such events is crucial to the PoE. The proponent of the PoE claims that these examples of natural disasters (whether we call them "evil" or not) seem to be in tension with the idea that an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-caring God is in charge.

Two Forms of the PoE

Blackburn claims that the PoE poses different problems for:

• Cleanthes
• Demea

Cleanthes' Problem with the PoE

Cleanthes was Hume’s spokesperson for the Design Argument. As we saw, that argument rested on the principle that: It is reasonable to believe whatever provides the best explanation of some range of observations.

• So, for Cleanthes, the PoE presents a serious problem because the fact that evil exists provides good evidence for rejecting the claim that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-caring.
• For Cleanthes to respond to the PoE, he would need to show that evil is exactly what we should expect from God.
  

Blackburn thinks that the PoE thus becomes a devastating objection to a theist like Cleanthes (or any theist who is commited to a principle of inference to the best explanation.) He takes the dormroom example (p.) to show this. (In class, I left this as an open question, although I did point out that the responses to the PoE discussed below seem to be especially problematic for any theist committed to a principle of inference to the best explanation.)

(In class, I described how Blackburn's point about Cleanthes can be taken as a distinct form of the PoE. As I've described, the basic PoE is that there seems to be some kind of tension between the claim that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-caring and the claim that evil exists. On the version of the PoE that Cleanthes would need to respond to, the claim is that the existence of evil provides good evidence for rejecting the claim that God is all-powerful (and all-knowing) and all-caring.)

Demea's Problem with the PoE

Demea was Hume’s spokesperson for the Ontological and Cosmological Arguments. As we saw, these arguments do not rely on any inference to the best explanation. So, for Demea, the PoE presents a very different problem than that facing Cleanthes:

•     To respond to the PoE, Demea just needs to show that evil is compatible with God’s existence.
  

(Again, this point can be seen as offering a distinct form of the PoE. Again, the basic PoE is that there seems to be some kind of tension between the claim that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-caring and the claim that evil exists. On the version of the PoE that Demea would need to respond to, the "tension"  actually amounts to a logical contradiction.)

Responding to the PoE

There are a number of ways that people have tried to respond to the PoE. As I pointed out in class, a straigtforward response would be to reject the conception of God that the problem is based on. That is, if you are willing to admit that god is not all-powerful, or not all-knowing, or not all-caring, then the PoE is no longer applicable.

But many theists are unwilling to reject this conception of God. Thus, they attempt to respond to the PoE in some other way. In class, I discussed three different kinds of responses to the PoE.


The “Can't Have Good Without Evil” Response

The Response:

The first response is that  “Good cannot exist without Evil”. The basic idea here is that if there were no evil, there would be no good either. As I described in class, this basic idea can be taken in a couple of different ways:

Evil is logically required for Good.

Evil is required for us to recognize Good.

Evil is required as a means to a greater Good.


Objections:

Limits God's Omnipotence. There is something He can't do, namely, He can't create good without evil. (On the first way of taking the point, it doesn't seem to much of a limit to take omnipotence to exclude the ability to do what is logically impossible. However, some views of God have denied this, seeing God as above logic, or perhaps even responsible for it.)

Why so much evil? If all we need is some evil in order to generate the required contrast (or to allow us to recognize Good, or to cause a greater good) why would He fill the world with so much of it? (For example, even if you could somehow argue that the world needed the evil of a Hitler in it, did the world really both Hitler and Stalin. Isn't that overdoing it?)

Along the same lines, why so much indiscriminant evil? (Even if sufferring causes some greater good, why have some people, e.g. the Jews in the Holocaust, had to suffer so much, while others, e.g. graduate students from Minnesota, haven't?)

The “Free Will” Defense

The Response:

Evil is no longer ascribed to God, but rather to humans.

Endowing humans with Free Will results in a greater Good, even though it will also result in some Evil. (This makes it a variant of response given above.)

Objections:

General problems with the notion of “Free Will”. (As I mentioned this briefly in class, this objection relies on a broader discussion of Free Will than we have engaged in, so don't worry too much about it.)


What about Natural Evils? The free will defense seems best suited to dealing with human produced evils. God may want to grant us all free will, even though He knows that some people will abuse this priviledge. But remember, some of the bad things that happen in this world are not just the product of someone’s evil will. Sometimes natural disasters strike, and when they do, they seem to strike indiscriminately. (They kill good and bad people alike.)


What about really bad Human Evils? Even if we focus our attention on human evils, some human evils seem like such atrocities that we may question God’s perfection. Take someone like Hitler. Hitler had a chance to express his free will, and the choices he made were really, really nasty. (And what might especially be troubling in this context is the fact that Hitler’s choices kept others from ever having a chance to express their free will.) Given the magnitude of the nastiness, we might question whether an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-caring God could really let that happen. (In Think, Blackburn draws a helpful analogy. Even though a good parent will allow their child a certain freedom to make their choices, even the wrong choices, one would be a very bad parent indeed if they let their child loose in a truly horrible and deadly environment with no protection whatsoever.)

Mackie's Objection: Why couldn’t God grant humans Free Will, but make them such that they always freely choose the Good? (In class, I left this one as a sort of puzzle. Does Mackie's question really make sense? If so, is it an objection to the Free Will Defense?)


The "Mysterious Ways" Response

The Response:

The final response we looked at was what I called the "Mysterious Ways" response. The idea here is to claim that even though it seems to us as if there is a contradiction between the presence of evil in the world and an omnipotent and wholly good God, in fact, there is no such contradiction. One way the point is sometimes pressed is that God works in "mysterious ways" and that we are ignorant of God's "big picture".

Objections:

Blackburn objects to this strategy because the theist seems to be denying that we can ever say anything about God. Blackburn quotes Wittgenstein who said (in a very different context) "A nothing will work as well as a something about which nothing can be said.


In class, I pressed this point with reference to Flew's "Death by a Thousand Qualifications". (The appeal to ignorance involved in the "Mysterious Ways response seems to be exactly like the kind of qualification that Flew objects to.)