Opening statement
I think it can be said that most people want to believe in God—at least they want to believe in a god who gives them what they want when they want it. As famous Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis said, “What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?’ We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, ‘liked to see young people enjoying themselves’ and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, ‘a good time was had by all.’”
I believe in the existence of Evil and in the existence of God—and I further believe that it is rational to believe in both. The problem of evil has been considered by many to be the greatest evidence against the existence of a loving God, because it does not make sense to man how the existence of evil and an all-loving being can exist at the same time. My opponent believes that the existence of evil makes the existence of an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God irrational. I will first respond to my opponent’s two arguments and then give several responses to the general problem of evil.
My opponent in this debate, The Worrywart, has given an excellent summary of the problem of evil on his blog. His research and knowledge of the subject are extensive. He has defined the classical problem and included some new ideas as well. I will present a basic outline of his arguments and respond to each of them and then provide several theodicies. (A theodicy is a justification for the acts of God.)
The Worrywart provides two arguments: a deductive argument (that is based on supposedly contradictory statements) and an inductive argument (that is one based on supposed evidence.).
I. The Deductive Argument:
The Worrywart states it like this:
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.
That this argument is valid is perhaps most easily seen by a reductio argument, in which one assumes that the conclusion — (7) — is false, and then shows that the denial of (7), along with premises (1) through (6), leads to a contradiction. Thus if, contrary to (7), God exists, it follows from (1) that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect. This, together with (2), (3), and (4) then entails that God has the power to eliminate all evil, that God knows when evil exists, and that God has the desire to eliminate all evil. But when (5) is conjoined with the reductio assumption that God exists, it then follows via modus ponens from (6) that 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. Thus we have a contradiction, and so premises (1) through (6) do validly imply (7).
Analysis:
1) God does not have to act right now
Simply put premise six is wrong. For it assumes that God has to act right now—a good being does not necessarily have to “always” eliminate evil as far as it can right now. This makes even more sense when you consider that God is not in space and time. He is not spatio-temporal—He exists eternally outside of time. Thus, He may respond in our future (and His present) and the problem is averted. Another way of considering this is that time is like a numbered line, but since God exists outside of time, He exists all along the number line—right now, in the past and in the future. It becomes non-sensical to say that God has to act now, since there exists no “now” outside of time and space. Thus, the “contradictory statements” can be avoided. And, as we will see, the argument can actually work in favor of the theistic worldview.
Norman Geisler has reconstituted the deductive argument in such a way that it turns into evidence for the existence of immortality. He claims that based on the fact that God has not acted against evil yet (but does have to in the future) there will necessarily be a solution to the problem in the future. In other words, God must act against evil in the future, thus there will be a perfect world. Now if we accept that God does exist, than we have the solution to the problem of evil in this reconstitution of the argument.
2) Free will defense
Premise six is wrong again—for if there is a greater good served by His inaction than this argument is defeated. Alvin Platinga has suggested that free will is this greater good. His argument is highly technical and is beyond the length and breadth of this post. (You can read his argument the highly acclaimed book “The Nature of Necessity”.) Robert Adams and others (Gutting p. 106, Howard-Snyder & O’leary-Hawthorne p. 1) claim that the majority of philosophers have accepted the validity of Platinga’s defense, and claim that it solves the logical problem of evil. Even William L. Rowe, who The Worrywart quotes in his post has said, “Some philosophers have contended that the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the existence of the theistic God. No one, I think, has succeeded in establishing such an extravagant claim. Indeed, granted incompatibilism, there is a fairly compelling argument for the view that the existence of evil is logically consistent with the existence of the theistic God.” ("The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” APQ 16 (1979) footnote 1, p. 335)
II. Inductive Argument
The Worrywart uses William L. Rowe’s version of the argument:
(1) There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.He further claims:
(2) An omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
(3) Therefore there does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.
“The evidential problem of evil is the problem that I just don’t see any theistic answer to, the best they can do is side-step the issue or simply throw up their hands and say ‘I don’t know but I still believe.’”Analysis:
1) How much evil is too much evil?
The argument above inherently assumes that there is too much evil—but this merely leads one to the question: how much evil is too much evil? The atheist needs to explain how much evil would constitute a state of equilibrium. Further, the atheist must here provide some kind of value system for knowing how much evil constitutes a unit of evil. For example, the atheist would have to assign a value to rape, murder, robbery, sneezing on each other, bad jokes, etc.
On a serious note though is one rape as evil as fifty rapes? What makes something more evil than something else? Another more pertinent example would be whether the death of an adult is more evil than the death of a child.
Since, and I’m assuming that it cannot be done, no value system exists it is meaningless to say that there is too much evil. Because we don’t know how much evil would constitute equilibrium or how much evil would be less than equilibrium.
2) God may have a greater good by allowing things to go as they are
God would not have to theoretically act if something greater were to happen as a result of leaving the equilibrium as it is. For example, if someone has a tumor that cannot be operated on without a great risk of losing his or her life, doctors might choose to leave the tumor as is for a time. Maybe the problem of evil cannot be eliminated because a greater good will come from leaving it.
What is this greater good? There are a number of possible reasons. First, it would be direct violation of free will for God to stop suffering and evil—to me, this would be a much greater evil than letting evil go on unabated, since it would entail the destruction of the world as we know it. I think if you asked most people if they would rather have evil and the world, or a world where they don’t have a choice they would prefer the first option (I’ll further clarify this argument throughout the debate).
Second, it might make God’s final plan of heaven impossible. Indeed, if God created the world knowing that the end result was a perfect heaven where people could only come as a result of living in a evil world—it would seem a greater good that God would allow evil to go on as it is.
These then are specific responses to the two arguments. Now I’ll provide—some justifications for God’s action, or rather inaction.
III. Theodicies and arguments from probability:
As I said above, a theodicy is a general justification for God’s action. There are many different kinds of theodicies out there—some of them more successful than others. Some like Peter van Inwagen’s try to explain the existence of evil through a narrative, others like Richard Swinburne’s are based on logic. I will focus on three theodicies: the existence of free will, Jesus’ own suffering for us and animal suffering. I will also argue that theism is intrinsically probable based on naturalism’s inability to answer the problem of evil.
1) Free Will
I have already used part of the free will theodicy, but I will expand and use it as theodicy against all three kinds of evil. “Free will” is our ability to act freely when presented with any situation that requires a choice—for example, when Adam and Eve were given the choice to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is the essence of free will—that our actions have side effects.
Some atheists claim that God should have created a world where there was less evil (i.e. that God could have created a world where we can only do good or where we cannot do as much evil as we do.)
But this is based on a common assumption that the omnipotence of God means that God can do anything. This is not true. For example, God cannot create round squares or round triangles—He cannot do something that is logically contradictory. I would also argue here that God cannot create free-willed beings and only allow them to do what is right. This would be the same as giving you five dollars and telling you that you can do whatever you want with it—and then, whenever you want to spend it on anything I don’t like, I stop you and take the five dollars from you. This action is necessarily contradictory, thus God cannot do it. I will probably refer back to this argument as we go forward, so keep it in mind.
The theodicy of free will also provides a specific response in cases of non-moral evil. For example, non-moral evil could have been avoided if someone had acted on their own free will. Most car crashes could be avoided by more responsible driving or maintenance—indeed, almost all crashes are the result of some kind of irresponsibility. Even in cases of natural disaster, such as the Black Death humans cannot get an out-of- jail free card. If people during the fourteenth century had actually cleaned their cities, then they have avoided most of the deaths. How can we blame God for the free actions of others? As I pointed out above, if God gave us free will and then took it away, it would not be free will.
A further point within the context of free will is its response to natural evil. Richard Swinburne has suggested that natural evils would be the expected result from a fallen world. He also suggests that if God intervened, He would have created a “toy-world, a world where things matter, but not very much; where [people] can choose and our choices make a small difference, but the real choice remains God’s.” [Swinburne cited by Davies 1998, 171].
2) God suffered the same evil as us
In my eyes, the best answer to the problem of evil is the claim that Christ took on the pain, suffering and sin of the world on the cross. What this means is that for every E (evil), Jesus suffered the same E on the cross. This answer is more theological than philosophical, but it does provide an emotional and, I believe, empirical answer to the problem of evil. For, if Jesus did take all of the pain and evil in the world on His shoulders during His crucifixion, then this would solve the dilemma of the love of God. For, if He suffered the same things as us than how can we claim that He does not care about us?
Further, it would seem logical to say that God did the only thing that He could do. Why would God die unnecessarily? If He’s omniscient, then He would know all of the possible solutions to the problem. Christ’s death on the Cross would have to be the only way in which He could fix the problem—for if there was another way, God would have used it. We can see this in Jesus’ last prayer at Gethsemane where He says, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42, NIV).
When used with the theodicy that we simply cannot know why evil exists it makes for possibly the best answer to the problem. We can claim that for every E an X exists, which we don’t know, but for every E God also suffered the same E. Thus the X probably exists.
3) Animal Suffering
The Worrywart believes that there is no explanation for why animals must suffer. The Worrywart claims,
“Perhaps the easiest example of pointless evil that no theodicy seems able to address is the existence of animal suffering…Animals existed millions of years before humans and were hunting and killing one another long before we showed up due to the fact that some of them desired the flesh of other animals to eat. Why didn’t God just make all animals herbivores?”I have three responses:
A) God did create herbivores
There are good reasons to believe that the animals in the Garden of Eden were herbivores. So this is the way God created the world—then man, as the free moral creature, ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and took away the perfect world.
B) Two possible causes
There are two possible causes for the fall of animals. C.S. Lewis suggests that it is the result of Satan. It also has been suggested that it is the result of man’s fall. Regardless, the answer is in the next response.
C) They will be herbivores again
It is clear that God will restore a perfect world like that of the Garden of Eden in heaven where animals will be herbivores once again (Isaiah 65:25, Hosea 2:18).
4) The problem of good and evil for naturalism
There are two problems for the atheist here. First, the atheist must assume that God exists to claim that evil exists. Second, the atheists probably cannot explain the existence of evil in their own worldview. In this argument, I will suggest that these two issues make theism more probable than atheism—because if the theodicies provided above do explain how God and evil can exist, than these argument will constitute evidence that theism is probably true.
A) The moral argument
There exists a large problem for the atheist who suggests that the problem of evil disproves God. For evil to exist in any kind of absolute form—some kind of creator of absolute moral laws must exist. It is a contradiction to say that A (being evil) disproves B (God), when the existence of A is contingent on the existence of B.
One may object that there is nothing absolute about evil. But the problem here is that my opponent assumes that absolute morals do exist. He assumes this when he suggests that Jose Stable was wrong for killing Ulysses. But if murder weren't inherently wrong, then how can he claim that Ulysses’s death was tragic? What basis does my opponent have for claiming that Robert Burdick was wrong for raping the sixteen women? Maybe he was raped as a child. But no, my opponent suggests that these things are inherently evil—that is that the act of rape is inherently wrong. As C.S. Lewis points out, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies.”
B) Atheism cannot explain evil.
Even if the problem of evil does not assume that God does exist, there is still a problem for atheists—mainly that the problem of evil also exists for the atheist. Because atheism must either disprove the existence of evil or explain how evil can epistemically mean anything to mere by products of chance. For every E (an instance of evil) there must be an X (explanation for E), but it is unclear how E and X can relate in world where E is not even supposed to exist. In essence I’m arguing that there can be no meaningful epistemic definition of evil in the naturalist state, thus there can be no explanation for the existence of evil. Because if you cannot define something, you obviously will not be able to explain it.
One might ask why the atheist has to do all of this work. The answer is that atheism is like an enclosed box—if the existence of everything in that box cannot be potentially explained, then the box falls apart. I would argue that evil represents an example of something that is potentially unexplainable.
Thus, if this response is true than it makes atheism inherently improbable—thus making theism either more probable or at least as probable as atheism. And I would argue that the other arguments for God's existence make theism inherently more probable.
Conclusion
I believe based on the above evidence that God does exist—and that the problem of evil does not disprove His existence. I further believe that based on the above evaluation of the Worrywart’s arguments that the more simple answer is that God does exist. I have made three separate cases in this post, first that both the deductive and inductive argument for God’s existence are not valid and second I have mounted three justifications of God’s actions and an argument for the improbability of the atheist system. I look forward to the Worrywart’s response. Feel free to ask questions or make comments about any part of my post or any related issues.
Humbly yours,
The Charger
You can read The Worrywart's response here.
