Subscribe
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-Epicurus
Epicurus asked this question some time in the third or fourth century B.C.E. It’s one of the oldest expressions of The Problem of Evil (PoE). The PoE is probably the most compelling argument against the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity and has been a thorn in the side of religious thinkers for millennia. The attempt to refute the PoE is called a theodicy.
Here’s one formal version of the argument, according to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. 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.
7. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.
What I’m interested in is the following question:
What is your theodicy, if you have one? How do you refute the argument or do you accept the conclusion?
I’m interested in debate here, so expect to be challenged.
In Part II, I will write about why this argument has significant personal interest to me.
—————-
UPDATE:I received multiple counter-arguments to my post about the Problem of Evil (PoE). Instead of very long comments addressing each counter-argument, I’ve decided to dedicate a separate post for each. That way, we can keep the various debates more organized. As I complete these posts, I will link them here.
The Denial of Evil Theodicy
The Spiritual/Personal Growth Theodicy
The Freewill Theodicy
Thinking about it a bit, one answer given in the past was that of Augustine, namely that evil doesn’t actually exist, only greater and lesser good. But if that is the case, why would God not want to give everyone the greatest amount of good? Thus I am thinking of it in a more general form:
Why does God not maximize happiness in the universe? Why not Utopia?
(Disclaimer: I don’t have a belief in God nor really a belief in ‘evil’, but nevertheless I will give this a shot.) My thought (and this is coming from a specifically Judeo-Christian angle) is something like this:
People tell me that kids are treated too softly these days. Why? If we can keep them safer, should we not? Sure, they respond, safety is good, but what good is it if you don’t learn anything? If you raise a kid in a bubble he could have the happiest, safest childhood in the world, but the moment he is let out he will likely do something stupid. He has to be tended all his life because he does not know anything.
There is another problem as well. Give a kid all the sweets in the world and he will not appreciate it. Give a kid who has never had sweets one and he will think of it as the most generous gift. Humans are by nature desiring creatures. With nothing to seek they don’t do anything. There is no sense of purpose or of accomplishment, and what gives a great sense of joy for one is useless to another, simply because one has always had it. Thus the same thing can give different levels of joy depending on what kind of background is looking at it.
Now let us increase scale a bit. If I let the government decide what was best for me, would this be right? Generally we say no. But what if we aren’t talking about some worst-scenario, Big Brother-type government, but one that really just wants us to be happy? Not only that, but what if it has the power to make us all happy? I think a considerable number of people would still fear the result, because they think it would take something away from what it means to be a human being. The highest value under this heading is freedom. Freedom is considered something worth fighting for, and people have suffered great pain for it. Just how worthwhile is it, though? How much pain? It is difficult to say.
Now I will go on to the Jews and their history. Why would God allow suffering? Because he made the Jews free. Freedom is a greater gift than any pain that might be suffered because of it. People were offered a chance to earn their rewards, and were allowed the joy of knowing that they had achieved their own victory. They got the chance not only to discover happiness, but why it is they should strive for it. Thus God allows evil because that evil is the consequence of a greater good, freedom. God wants worship only from those who want to worship Him (there is no satisfaction in praise from someone we know to be a sycophant). He did not create evil, we did. He allows it because it is a necessary part of our freedom, and, seeing as we are free, we also have the ability to fight it or to ask for His help. Going to an example in Christianity, God allowed what would seem to be the greatest evil (his own crucifixion) for the sake of a greater good, namely, the saving of the souls of men. Thus, evil is part of a greater good, and to not see this would be missing the bigger picture (this is similar to what Augustine himself says, in that, if you see something as evil, that is because you don’t understand its’ place in the grand plan).
Continuing on the note of freedom, what good are a people who are completely helpless because they neither know nor care to know anything of the world? While anyone can make a fancy clockwork and set it to go, it seems like something more to create an independent system and let it do its own work and creation. Thus it seems to be to the greater glory of God to have free beings that are capable of evil for the cases when they resist and instead choose Him. Not only that, it seems to be to the greater good of the beings in question, for they can learn and develop from their experiences.
Why not just make them omnipotent, then? Because learning and developing are themselves valuable things worth having. Thus we let kids hurt themselves so that they will become better people. Those who never leave their homes are bland and not very interesting, and God agrees in this sense.
Also, if God made everyone always happy, then happiness would mean little. What is happiness without pain, seriously? If we had never felt pain, if happiness was the start point, how much would we care about happiness or appreciate it? Why worship God if one will be happy either way? Why would God want worship if he just got it because he metaphorically scratched people’s itches? When one compares sensual and spiritual pleasures from a religious angle, the case almost always seems to be made that spiritual pleasure comes from the reality or real nature of things, and sensual does not. We can apply this to our example by saying that pleasure and goodness have more meaning, or that more is gained, when evil exists. One cannot fully realize the goodness or pleasure in something unless one has a point of comparison.
—–
To me it seems the freedom argument is the most important. God created free people and wanted them to worship Him out of choice, not because they were programmed to. Being free, people would be able to become their own greatness. Without evil there are no heroes or saviors or anyone of importance, really. Also, I find the other arguments more subject to objections: the appreciation of happiness could be rejected on the grounds that God could, being God, just make them that happy anyways. It seems it must be the case that he didn’t simply want people to be happy all the time. But if freedom is something of great intrinsic value (which I’m not going to argue for here, nor am sure if I could), or at least enough to overcome the evils it brings about, then it would seem to be worth at least allowing the possibility of evil as a necessary consequence.
I think another angle of attack in trying to deduce whether God exists is in the physical realm.
We are nowhere near there yet however if it can be proven theoretically that only one universe can exist and it has to have the physical laws we know then God is superflous.This is because if God can create only one universe then by his very definition of being able to do anything he cannot exist.A God which can create only one universe which obey the laws of nature as we know them is not all powerful.
What of the laws that god must adhere to and use like the principle of least action.So if god has any mechanism for thinking then what are they and how can they be quantified and what are his limits.
Notice this kind of inquiry is off limits for most religions and no wonder.It raises all sorts of questions which for religious “thinkers” are unanswerable and there fore off limits.
It is sort of like the real estate agent showing you through a house but not showing you the basement.Well that is EXACTLY where you want to go because there might be some carpenter ants down there.
By the way I think that question of Epicurus is brilliant and he should be taught in every school.Just that simple question if known by everyone could change history
I think the biggest problem with people who pose this question and arrive at the point that there either is no god or that the god that exists is malevolent are making certain assumptions.
Personally I believe that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect and that he has a plan to eliminate the evil that there is. He has always had a plan, even before evil existed.
As Snurp said, freedom is a key here. If he had created a universe in which freedom was never an option then it would not have been worth it. Knowing as he did that freedom would produce evil, he planned accordingly to defeat it.
The assumption that is made is that we somehow know best. The we in all of our limited knowledge, power, and moral corruption know how the problem of evil should be handled. If god is everything that Christians claim then qed (I think that’s right) he will know how best evil should be handled, right?
And sawaz you are making a HUGE series of assumptions. But assuming what you posit is correct you are also assuming that because God can do something he therefore should or would do that thing. We would haveto prove that God couldn’t not that God wouldn’t.
It just hit me as I read Scott’s response: I wonder how the idea of freedom as good would connect to the consideration of God’s omniscience and free will? If there is a plan (following Scott) and freedom is best it seems we have to show that God’s plan does not preclude the ability of people to act freely, since freedom as I understand it would imply the definite ability to not act with a plan, even God’s. But perhaps we should save that truckload of worms for another time. More generally, if people are fully free then the definite possibility exists that everyone at all times may reject God and actively strive to create as much misery and suffering as possible. Whether that would overcome the value of freedom is debatable depending upon the value freedom is given, but it looks like it at least complicates the issue.
On a separate note, the problem with claiming that God knows the best way to solve evil and that we don’t understand is that, even if it isn’t a problem and he does know, that brings us no closer to an answer, and so debate seems useless. It also doesn’t tell us whether it is possible for us to find out, and so we may be able to come up with (divine, if you will
) an answer but instead give up. Or perhaps there is no solution, but we will not find out for the same reason.
Scott I think you may have misunderstood my letter.I did’nt day anything about if god should or should’nt do anything i said if god could do some things as in being able to do so.
There is a big difference.
There is something which has’nt been touched on here and that is the definition of evil or whether it can even be fully defined.In the animal kingdom there are all sorts of things going on of immense cruelty to us but does that mean a wasp or lion is evil?Probably the respons that i will be given is that animals don’t mean to be evil but then again some people who are evil actually think they are doing good!
Maybe evil is like truth it cannot be defined and one can always ask a question as to whether this or that action is evil and not be able to give a defintive answer.Notice that is different than not being able to say that is evil for some situations.
For example one can say that a computer program will halt or not for some programs but no one can definitively say that for all programs.Perhaps there is an analogy with good and evil.Perhaps evil is a proper class and not a set and can never be collected into a whole.
Once we get to that point if we can then god won’t know if something is evil if the question is greater than his information processing capacity.People will instantly jump on that and say that of course he can do anything yea well let’s see him show himself.That should’nt be too hard for an all powerful being
Sometimes people get caught up in abstractions and that can be fun however what people believe has repurcussions on the ground where we live or at least I do and if someone is going to put on a funny hat and tell me I have believe what they do or else well that can lead to some bad consequences for us all
Hello All,
In an effort to keep the discussions and debates focused, I’m making a separate post for each theodicy. I’ve finished the first one, The Denial of Evil Theodicy. It won’t appear on the the main page, but you can find it under the category “Hidden”. Also, I’ll eventually link them all under this post in an “Update” section. I’ll have more soon.
Sorry, the link in my last comment was broken. It’s fixed now.
What is Evil?
Some say evil is the opposite of Good but that leads to the question of what is good.
Only God is good and evil is the is the absence of God.
Hello L. (I apologize for not using the name you used, but I reserve that name for my wife),
Your comment is a version of the denial of evil theodicy. Follow the link to read more about the theodicy and my response.
“Hello L. (I apologize for not using the name you used, but I reserve that name for my wife)”
Awwww. Big marshmallow.