Unorganized thoughts on the problem of evil
Generally speaking, the philosophical argument known as the “problem of evil” is considered to be the strongest atheist argument against theism. Partly for this reason, I’ve been thinking about it for a long while, and have come to a few conclusions.
Before I start, though, I should point you to the excellent discussion of the issue by Jeremy Pierce at Parableman. Basically everything I’m about to say here is elaborated more in his series, specifically in posts 26-32.
The argument comes in two forms, one a logical argument and the other an evidential argument. The first is the stronger, claiming that God’s existence is impossible in light of evil, the second only claiming that it is improbable.
The answers I have come to find satisfaction in can essentially be boiled down to the following:
1. The logical argument fails because it goes against Scripture in its understanding of omnipotence; the Bible explicitly says there are some things God cannot do (lie being the most prominent). This means, however, that it is at least possible that God cannot stop some evil, in some sense, since it is certain that there are some things God cannot do.
2. The evidential argument fails because it assumes that the evaluator, or human beings in general, would be capable of knowing what reasons, or at least what kind of reasons, God would have for allowing some of the most horrendous evils we can think of. Again, Scripture, a specific example being the book of Job in general, claims the opposite.
Both of these arguments have been extrapolated from some of the most basic attributes of God in the Western monotheistic tradition, and I think successfully; but the happy fact (for Christians, and Jews for that matter) is that such arguments are not strictly necessary, since these qualifications/counter-arguments are built directly into the claims of Christianity. Because of this, the argument from evil fails to be a relevant argument against the Christian version of theism, whatever merits it might have against other theisms.
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It occurred to me today that denying God’s foreknowledge, as process theology and open theism do, does not really solve the problem of evil at all, though, apart from allegedly exegetical arguments, this is claimed to be the main virtue of these views. The fact is, the Bible claims that God is constantly upholding everything in existence, moment by moment. But this entails that he is aware of everything in the present. Yet this means that he at least knows (even if only probabilistically) that certain evils based on free will will happen before they do: consider the example of a person about to be unjustly executed by a firing squad. Any human being observing the situation would be clearly aware of what was about to happen, and so how much more would that be the case with God? But if this is the case, then denying that God knew this would happen beforehand, at some point beforehand, is irrelevant; right before it happens, and even as it is happening (say, while the bullets are travelling through the air), God still has an opportunity to prevent the evil from occuring, if he so wished.
Thus denying that God foreknows the evil actions of free agents does nothing to alleviate the problem of evil.
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I mentioned in an earlier post that Doug Wilson is reviewing David Bentley Hart’s book about theodicy and the Tsunami. Hart implicitly accuses Calvinists of not knowing the God revealed in Christ for their relentless following of the logic about God’s providence to its conclusions about God intending everything that comes to pass, in some sense.
Hart’s own solution is to deny that in every case God has a good intention for evil that comes to pass in history; sometimes he has no purpose at all. But it struck me today that, out of the two options, I find Hart’s position making God seem less worthy of worship than the Calvinist position.
Consider: both sides say that God is aware of and sustains in existence all evil as it comes to pass. Further, all agree that God is intrinsically and immutably good, and that, even further, this goodness motivates God to destroy evil eventually. Finally, both agree God is omnipotent, at least in the minimal sense that God is naturally capable of making creatures cease to exist, whatever might be the case about a given creature at a given point in history (i.e., even if something about God’s plan meant he couldn’t annihilate a particular creature, those historical/teleological constraints on God’s plan aside, his power is capable of annihilating anything he creates).
But this means that at any given situation, God is both able to stop evil and motivated to stop it out of goodness; yet it is also admitted by both sides that he does not do so in every situation. At this point the two sides diverge: the Calvinist (and most orthodox Christians) would say that God has some good purpose for not stopping that particular evil at that point, while Hart would say that in some situations God has no reason for not stopping the evil. One appeals to mystery and assumes the goodness and wisdom of God, the other, apparently, to apathy or arbitrariness. Which one seems more worthy of the God of Scripture?
There have been a few posts on Prosblogion on this. It’s a commentary on Plantinga and Tooley’s debate in the book Knowledge of God.
It’s fairly prolix, and I feel like it ignores some of the most obvious and practical issues, but, it’s there for anyone who’s interested (though, you might be better just to skip Prosblogion and just get a copy of the book).
For the most part, it seems that that discussion is moving along as if the “agnostic” response from Alston, Gnassle and Howard-Snyder didn’t exist.
Mark Horne, incidentally, has just posted something on the essence of sin which essentially explains why the “agnostic” response to the problem of evil is exactly what Adam and Eve were expected to make in the Garden:
The essence of what the Bible describes as saving faith is (or necessarily implies), ironically, the “agnostic” response to the problem of evil.
I also believe that the problem of evil is the strongest argument given by atheists for atheism. I think that your defense of Christian theism is correct. Part of the problem is that the literature does not treat the problem of evil as a problem for Christian theism, but as a problem for theism in general. This leaves out much of the resources Christians have that other theists may not. It is for such reasons that I do not believe the problem of evil provides any evidence against the existence of God.
I don’t know if I would call Howard-Synder’s position ‘agnostic’. I believe I have heard it called ’skeptical theism’ instead.
Right; Jeremy Pierce mentioned the problem with the name, I just thought that was it’s technical name.
I thought skeptical theism was something else, more akin to deism?
Skeptical theism is called that because they do not believe that they know God’s reasons for permitting evil. One could contrast it with the approach of giving a theodicy. Skeptical theists have no problems with giving a defense for the problem of evil though – and they do. The name likely arose as a skepticism about the soundness of theodicies.
Thanks Matt!
Hello,
Any attempt to understand the problem of evil is actually an attempt to receive knowledge by “man’s method”: eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We know that this doesn’t work, in fact all supposed answers only give rise to more questions. More open questions = more unknown = more darkness = more evil.
Man’s method doesn’t work! Only salvation is a solution. Salvation!
I’ve been elaborting on the knowledge of Good and Evil on my blog provided here. The latest posting deals with the origin of sin. You might check it out.
Kehrhelm