On the Problem of Evil

Does Evil Exist?

A philosopher, which I am not, would have plenty of ways to argue that evil does not in fact exist.  However, I, and probably you, are not philosophers.  So we can rest assured that evil exists because this is consistent with our human experience.  Bashar al-Assad is probably evil.  Mother Theresa is of course very good.

So we know by experience and intuition that human evil exists.

What is the problem?

Evil is only a problem if we believe in a god that loves us.  If you don't fall into that category, then this blog post is not for you.  But if you suppose that such a god may exist, proceed.

Here is the problem very simply, although it can be worded in different ways:

Premise 1.) God is supposed by most theists to be all good, all knowing, and all powerful.

Premise 2.) Evil exists on Earth.

Premise 3.) If God was as he is supposed to be by theists, then he would not let evil happen.

Conclusion: God is not all good, not all knowing, not all powerful, or does not exist.

Now notice that I have smuggled in a stock conclusion.  Sometimes the Christian replaces the conclusion with a simple question mark... What are we to conclude?  If we accept all the premises, which I think it is hard not to, then the conclusion seems pretty natural.  If God is not what Christians suppose him to be, why believe in him?  And isn't it easier and simpler to just throw out the whole idea of a god and settle on atheism?

Woah.  Ouch.  This is the kind of question that a great many Christians feel uncomfortable approaching, but I think this is because they just don't know how to answer it.  Let me offer my own amateur thoughts on the question.

What are you asking God to do?

Ultimately, when the skeptic brings up the problem of human evil, he fails to consider the award-winning paradox he lands into his own boat.  What, my dear skeptic, are you asking God to do?

First let us consider human will.  You and I, normal people, will agree that we have a will that generally is subject to our desires and allows us to carry out our own personal program.  The direction in which our wills are oriented depends upon our spiritual status, our mood, our digestion, and many other things.  But we will probably agree that our wills are "free" in the sense that no one is flipping the switches in our heads; no one is taking the wheel and making us do things as though we were controlled by a different personality, or our own bodies.  Christians call such people "possessed" by demons or what have you.  Some people, theists and materialists alike, believe in "determinism."  In this doctrine, our wills are not "free" in any sense because our actions were predetermined by physical laws at the creation of the universe, some 14 billion years ago.  In general, people do not accept this doctrine because it is probably insane, so let us proceed without acknowledging it.  So we probably have a "free will."

But we use it toward the wrong ends.  Because we as a race are undisciplined and don't really like listening to the laws written on our hearts, our wills are oriented in all different directions, often in contradiction to one another.  More on this in another blog post.

So what is God to do?

Strike free will?  Somehow annihilate evil without impacting our wills?  What?

God and Possible Worlds

Let us take a page from the philosophical notion of "possible worlds."  Possible worlds are simply imaginary universes where we imagine that different scenarios are playing out and try to guess the logical consequences of these scenarios (this is my own incomplete understanding).  

A hint of what I lay out below is found in book 5, Pro and Contra, of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, in a section in which Ivan is discussing exactly this problem with Alyosha.  It's probably the best treatment of the problem of evil in a fictional work.

If we imagine possible worlds as far as free will and evil, we come up with some startling scenarios.

1.) A universe with free will but no possibility of evil

2.) A universe with free will and the possibility of evil

3.) A universe with no free will and no possibility of evil

4.) A universe with no free will but with the possibility evil

Again, let us suppose that God is good, knows everything, and is powerful.  At the beginning he created the universe, and he could have only chosen one of the four options above.  To do otherwise would be a self-contradiction, which theologians generally agree God cannot do, even if he so chose (he would not).  And if he were good, he would choose to create the most good universe.  That's what he does.  So which is most good?

Well, universe 1 seems contradictory.  How can your will be free if there is no possibility of using it toward the wrong ends?  If God did interventionist miracles every time you freely chose to do something evil, then he would be constantly meddling with the fabric of reality.  A criminal tries to rob a bank, and shoots at the teller; but God stops the bullet so the teller is fine.  Why stop there?  Why not cause the gun to malfunction so it doesn't fire in the first place?  Why not override the criminal's nervous system so that he can't pull the trigger?  Why not strike the thought from his head in the first place, perform a sort of miraculous lobotomy?

Do you see the problem here?  By removing the possibility of human evil, God has also removed free will.  So universe 1 would not be possible anyway.

Universe 2 seems to be the universe we inhabit.

Universe 3 does seem possible.  It's outlined in the interventionist universe described above.  But that universe is probably not the "most good" universe, because we have no free wills.  And you and I can agree that having our own wills is a good thing.  So God, if he is good, would not want to remove from us the possibility of using our own wills, which of course can be directed toward very altruistic and saintly ends.

Universe 4 doesn't sound good at all, and it may also, like universe 1, be self-contradictory.  No free will, but with evil all around?  Who would want to live there?  Certainly a good God would not create it.

So it sounds like universe 2 is the "most good" universe, even though we have abused our free will and now inhabit a universe in which evil is actual, rather than only potential.

Again: What are you asking God to do?

God only had so many options when creating our universe.  Free will, or no free will.  The possibility of evil, or no possibility of evil.  That we have decided to turn our Earth into a battleground where the Devil always seems to be winning, that was our choice, not God's.

This discussion has not proven that God exists, not by a stretch.  But it should shed some light on why all Christians both believe in a good God and also acknowledge that evil really does exist.