The Problem of Evil


I. The Problem

In the chapter "Rebellion" in Dostoyevsky's The Brother's Karamazov, Ivan challenges Alyosha's faith in God by pointing to various horribly evil things that have been done to innocent children. In class, we discussed how this was related to The Problem of Evil. The Problem of Evil claims that the following four propositions cannot be held consistently together:

    (1)    God is omnipotent (all-powerful)
    (2)    God is omniscient (all-knowing)
    (3)    God is omnibenevolent (all-good)
    (4)    Evil exists.
 

The idea is that if God were omnipotent, then he would have the power to stop evil wherever it may occur; if he were omniscient, then he would always know where evil was occurring; and if he were omnibenevolent, then he would always want to stop evil whenever he could. So God would have the power, the know-how, and the motivation to eradicate evil, but if (4) is true, evil is NOT eradicated. So, to be consistent, one of (1)-(4) has to go.

Several attempts have been made to solve this problem, some adequate and some not. (See J. L. Mackie's "Evil and Omnipotence"; much of the handout below is a summary of Mackie's points in this article.) The adequate responses will simply reject either one of (1) through (4) above. If one denies that God is omniscient, or denies that he is omnipotent or omnibenevolent, then the problem of evil will be dissolved. Similarly, one can also deny that evil exists to solve the problem. (For example, you might think that evil is only an illusion, or that what we call "evil" isn't really evil at all, etc.) Any of these ways of dissolving the Problem of Evil will work.

However, more often than not, people try to get out of the Problem of Evil by holding all of (1) through (4) and trying to add a fifth proposition, or qualify one of the four propositions in some way. These sorts of attempts do not, ultimately, solve the problem at all. Below is a summary of some of these attempts, with a brief explanation of why each fails as a response to the problem.
 

II. Attempted (Inadequate) Solutions


First Problem: If there has to be evil in order for there to be good, then this seems to undermine God's omnipotence (hence, proposition (1)). For there is something that God cannot do--namely, make good without evil.

Now one might respond as follows: it is logically impossible for there to be good without evil, and it  was never supposed that God could do the logically impossible. (Remember the Paradox of Omnipotence we talked about in class: can God create a rock so heavy he can't lift it? Either way, it looks like we have something that God can't do.) However, notice that this still cuts into God's purported omnipotence, and we should read (1) more carefully if we are going to maintain that God is bound by laws of logic, and cannot make good without evil.

Second Problem: Moreover, notice that this sort of view changes what we might have originally thought "good" meant. For if good cannot exist without evil, then it seems that good and evil are now counterpart properties in much the same way that "big" and "small" are. Nothing is big without something else being small because these are comparative, relative terms. What may be big relative to something small may be small relative to something bigger. If good and evil are like this, then it seems that good and evil wouldn't be absolute, but comparative and relative. And this does not seem to be what someone thinks when they say that God is omnibenevolent.

Most people think that God could exist--and be good!--in a lonely world. Think about it: could God have existed just by himself, with nothing else around? You better hope so, for if not, this would undermine his omnipotence. But if God can be in a lonely world, then is he good in this world? If good cannot exist without evil, then there needs to be evil in this world if God is good in it. But then where does the evil come from? We said God was alone. If there has to be evil in order for there to be good, and if God is good, then he must be evil as well. But then proposition (3) above isn't true---God isn't all good.

Supporters of proposition (3) usually think that God is good objectively, not comparatively like "big" and "small" are. But if this is right, then in what way would evil be necessary for there to be good?


Third Problem: Notice that the problem of evil doesn't arise merely because there is in fact evil in the world. As Hume argues through Philo in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, it is also problematic that there is so much evil. So, sure, it might be that evil is necessary for good, but why does there have to be so much of it? Couldn't the world have been just as it was but for one suffering person to have suffered just a teeny bit less?

How one responds to this problem will of course depend on how, exactly, you think that evil is necessary for good. You might think that evil is necessary for good so that we can recognize good. This response is dealt with below. Or you might think that, as mentioned above, that 'good' and 'evil' are comparative terms like 'big' and 'small' are. Then you might think that we need lots and lots of evil so that the contrastive good can be so much better in comparison. A basketball player, for example, looks so much taller compared to an ant than he does when he's compared to a cheerleader. Aside from the difficulties mentioned above about this sort of view of goodness, there is the following, additional worry: why should we think it so important that the difference between good an evil be so great? Intuitively, we would all welcome minimizing the contrast between good and evil if it meant an overall reduction of the intensity of evil. If we would all welcome it, then why didn't God?

So no matter how you view good and evil, and even if you think that one is necessary for the other, this doesn't answer the problem of why there is so much evil.

Fourth Problem: Even if it were true that evil was necessary for good, and even if it was true that there had to be just as much evil as there actually is, and that there couldn't have been even the teeniest bit less, one should wonder why there had to be anything at all. Intuitively, if God knew that good was going to be necessarily accompanied by evil (which he would have to, if proposition (2) is true), then he had a choice between making this world or not making it at all. So not only does it have to be the case that this world is the best of all of the worlds that were possible. It also has to be that having this world--with all of it's evil--is better than no world at all.

Reminiscent of Ivan's question to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamozov, if you knew that you could create a world with really, really good things in it--eternal harmony and all of that--but that the price of all of this goodness was, say, the suffering of just one innocent child--would you do it? Would you create the world, knowing it's cost? Ivan and Alyosha wouldn't. And neither would anybody who is even a little bit good, intuitively. So if proposition (3) is true, why did God create this world rather than create nothing?


Consider the example we discussed (and which Mackie discusses briefly in "Evil and Omnipotence"): Imagine that the entire world was red. And all of it was--perhaps implausibly--the same shade of red. Intuitively, we would not be able to 'see' or recognize redness, since we would have no idea what non-redness is. But notice that this is a purely epistemic point: we wouldn't know that there was red, but this doesn't prevent red being in the world. Indeed, the example was set up as "imagine that the entire world was red...". There better be redness in a world that is entirely red. Likewise, if evil is needed for us to recognize the good, then this is about us and what we can know. It doesn't mean that the world couldn't have been one in which there were was no evil, and only good; this attempted solution doesn't claim that it is metaphysically impossible to have a world that had good without evil. Rather, this solution claims that in such an all-good world, we wouldn't be able to recognize or know the good. And, of course, if we can't know the good, we won't be able to choose it. And you might think that our being able to choose the good is integral to God's purpose for us here on earth. (The free will issue will be discussed below.)

First Problem: Related to the Third Problem mentioned in the previous section, this attempted solution does not take into account the intensity of evil. Presumably, we only need a small speck of non-red in a nearly all-red world to recognize red. So if the evil is here just so that we can know good from not-good then there only needs to be a tiny little bit: just one person suffering, or just one person suffering for just an hour, or suffering for an hour but not so intensely. For if the evil is here just so that we can distinguish it from good, and eventually choose the good, then just a small amount of evil will get the job done. So we are left with a question as to why, if the attempted solution #2 is right, and propositions (1)-(3) are true, there is so much evil.

Second Problem: Similar to the above worry, we might wonder why there had to be any evil at all. In an all-red world, any speck of non-red would have been enough to get us to recognize red from non-red. This non-red could have been green or blue or black or orange or anything, so long as the color was not red. Similarly, in order to distinguish good from not-good, all we need is a small something that is not good. But lots of things are not good without being evil; many things are morally neutral, for example. Standing still for 5 minutes, doing nothing, is neither good nor bad. And it seems that such a thing would provide the necessary contrast, allowing us to distinguish good from not-good. Certainly we would be able to distinguish something good like being kind to others from doing something morally innocuous, like standing still for 5 minutes. So if all of the evil that is in the world is just to get us to recognize good from not-good, then it is still a mystery why there had to be evil. For anything not good--anything morally neutral--would have accomplished the same task.

Third Problem: It's unclear that there needs to actually be evil (or non-good) in the world in order for us to recognize the good; merely the appearance of evil would have gotten the job done just as well.

When we were little, for example, we probably learned some moral lessons from fiction. Our parents told us bedtime stories like Peter and the Wolf, The Emperor's New Clothes, Little Red Riding Hood, and Alice in Wonderland to get us to learn things such as: don't lie about being in trouble or don't lie in general or trust yourself; don't be afraid to ask questions or don't talk to strangers, especially when walking alone in the woods or be weary of cross-dressing wolves or don't eat chunks of funky mushrooms given to you by talking caterpillars. We've acquired many of our life-guiding principles from untruth. We can also learn things from dreams and imaginations. People will often take precautions in life to help prevent some disaster that was only nightmared about at night. Or imagining what good or bad things might happen in the future if certain actions are taken now--even if the imagined results are unrealistic, idealized, or untrue--they will still have the effect of getting us to do something here and now. And in this way, we learn from things that don't actually take place.

So why did there need to actually be evil in order for us to recognize good? God could have sent down some freakish nightmares about genocide and torture. He could have had us imagine all sorts of evil things whenever it looked like we weren't 'seeing' or recognizing the good. And we could have learned from these evil simulacrum what good was in just the way that we learn it from actual, exiting evil. Or we can imagine that God comes down tomorrow and says: "Just kidding! No one has actually ever suffered! All the apparent violence and wars and seeming torture was all just an elaborate rouse. I just wanted you to see what the good was (so that you could choose it freely, etc)."  Would our knowledge of the good change? Would we suddenly not know what good is, just because all of the evil had been an illusion? It seems not. So there need not be actual evil for us to know good; just having an idea of evil (or non-good) would have been enough. And God could surely do that! Especially if (1) is true.

That he didn't, however, lands us right back into the Problem of Evil.

Fourth Problem: Finally, if proposition (1) is true, then it seems God could have given us knowledge of good just by wanting it to be so. If God can 'give' people knowledge of his own self, if he can give us knowledge of what he's like, and that there is a heaven and hell, and the whole theistic world-view, then it seems he could have given us knowledge of the good without evil. If we say he couldn't have--that there was no other way for us to come to know good without there actually being evil in the world--then this is yet another limitation on God's power. So, again, it looks like (1) is undermined. And we're right back into the Problem of Evil again.

Perhaps it's not a matter of metaphysics or epistemology: it's not that there has to be evil in order for there to be good, nor is it that there has to be evil for us to know the good. Rather, its that the world is just better with some evil in it. Perhaps, the world is somehow more beautiful, or less boring, with evil in it than not.

Think of how good the day is after something bad has happened the night before. Think of how much someone cherishes life right after they've had a near-death experience. Think of how Tyler Durden in Fight Club threatens the life of a convenience store attendant (Raymond K. Hessel) simply so that "[Raymond's] dinner is going to taste better than any meal [he's] eaten, and tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of [his] entire life." The world doesn't really change, but good things are somehow bettered when they are contrasted with evil than if they weren't. Likewise, the world is bettered if there is some evil in it than if there wasn't.

First Problem: Echoing previous complaints, we might worry that while a little bit of evil may make the world better, there doesn't seem to be any reason why there had to be so much of it. So even if true, this attempted solution only deals with the presence of evil, but not the intensity.

But perhaps the proponent of this attempted solution had something more like this in mind: "...the best possible organization of the universe will not be static, but progressive, that the gradual overcoming of evil by good is really a finer thing that would be the eternal unchallenged supremacy of good." (From Mackie's "Evil and Omnipotence".)

Second Problem: This still doesn't answer why there is the amount of evil that there is. For if it is always better to triumph over evil than not, then we might wonder why there isn't even more evil then there actually is. If there were more evil, then overcoming it would be an even finer thing than the actual amount of evil that we have right now. But perhaps a theist responds: "no, more evil would not have made a difference if we overcame it." Yet if this is right, then we are left wondering why there couldn't have been a little bit less with there being no overall difference in the overcoming. In other words: if more evil would not have made a difference to the betterness of the world that results from overcoming the evil in it, then why isn't it the case that less evil also would not have made a difference to the betterness of the world (that results from overcoming the evil in it).

Third Problem: Finally, as has been mention again and again: any time we say that God could not have made the world such that it was both (i) the best it could be and (ii) contained little to no evil, we are either threatening proposition (1) or (3).

First Problem: This assumes that a world where agents have free will, even if this results in evil happening on earth, is better than a world where agents do not have free  will. But notice that this restricts God's power, for there is something that God cannot do--namely, give us free will without evil happening. And we might then ask: why couldn't God have made a world where we are free, and always freely choose the good? It doesn't seem logically impossible that the world could have been such; indeed, as we'll discuss in class, this seems entirely possible. So why didn't God do it? It looks we are back to the Problem of Evil again.

How can we be limited but free? Consider the various things that you can and cannot do right now. You can keep sitting at your computer. You can take off and go get a beer. You can curl up in your bed and go back to sleep. You can go run out to the local soup kitchen and make yourself useful. You can knit a sweater, learn html code, or go hug a friend. But there are many things you can NOT do. You cannot sprout wings and fly. You can't breathe underwater. You cannot solve world hunger, cure cancer, or save a rain forest all by yourself from your dorm room. And you can't obliterate millions just by thinking about it, even if you were so maliciously inclined. There are certain laws of nature that prohibit us from doing certain things. We can't sprout wings or fly because we are made a certain way and the world has certain consistent, uniform laws that confine us to moving around in a certain way. And we can't do much just by thinking about it because we and the world are made in such a way that--at least so far--makes telekinesis an ineffective means to any end. Wishing doesn't make it so, unfortunately. Yet we don't generally think that because we are limited in these ways--because we can't sprout wings and fly, or breathe underwater, or obliterate a population just by thinking about it--that we are thereby unfree. On the contrary, many of us think we do have free will, and that we make free choices about what to do every day.

So many think: we DO have free will, yet we are nonetheless limited in certain ways. Certain laws of nature, certain physical limitations, certain ways the world is combined with certain ways we are made just make it so that we cannot do certain things. But these limitations do not inhibit our freedom, intuitively.

Yet if we can be limited yet free in this way, why couldn't God have made us limited yet free in another way? If God is all-powerful, then he could have presumably made the laws of nature any which way he pleased. He could've made it that we couldn't lift something heavier than 5 pounds. Or that we never got taller than 2 feet. Or that we could never hold any sharp, pointy object because our hands were shaped in a particular unfriendly-to-sharp-pointy-objects sort of way. Or that our skin could thicken like bullet-proof armor at the first threat of danger. Or that bullets, oddly enough, turned into daisies every time they got near blood. If God was all-powerful, he could've created the laws of nature any way he wished. But, as was all ready mentioned before, this would not inhibitour freedom at all. For we would still be able to have some choice about what to do. Just not all of the choices. But on reflection, we never needed all of the choices in order to be free.

Notice, too, that God need not even be ALL powerful for the world to have had different laws of nature. He just needed to have the power to change, amend, suspend, or even simply have had the option of beginning the universe with different laws of nature than it currently has. Yet if someone is going to claim that he couldn't have even done this, then (1) should simply be abandoned.

Second Problem: Imagine that you are creating a robot. You program the robot, and give it certain abilities. One of the abilities you give it is the capacity to learn and evolve. Another ability you give it is to use its legs to kick objects. When programming it in the way you did, you imagined it would kick things such as soccer balls back to kids' playgrounds and grenades out of harms way. After the robot goes out into the world, however, it starts developing a penchant for kicking cute puppies. It seeks newborn pups, especially the super cuddly and furry ones, and punts them as far as he can.

Now, would you, the creator, be held at least partially responsible for the robot's evil deeds? Intuitively, yes. This was after all part of Dr. Frankenstein's guilt after realized that he'd created an abomination. He is partially responsible for unleashing a monster into the world. And sure, we may exempt Dr. Frankenstein for doing what he did. But notice that this is because he presumably didn't know what would happen when sewed decomposing body parts together and electrocuted them with lightening. God, on the other hand, if proposition (2) is true, did know what was going to happen. He knew that once we were created, we would create as much evil as we did. Yet he did it anyway. If God was a normal human being and did what he did, we would hold him responsible for his creation's deeds--even if the creation did what it did out of free will. Free will, in other words, doesn't exempt God from responsibility. So we are right back into the Problem of Evil.



Other things to consider concerning Free Will: There is also the complication of how free will interacts with God's omnipotence and his omniscience. For example, we might wonder: why couldn't God have given us free will, but intervened only when someone chose to do something evil? Or why couldn't he have frustrated any attempts to do evil, without interfering with the choice to try to do evil? Going back to the Paradox of Omnipotence: Can God create a thing he cannot control? We will explore these questions more fully in class.


References and Resources:

Fydor Dostoyevsky, "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor" in The Grand Inquisitor with related chapters from The Brother's Karamazov, Constance Garnett (Translation), 1993. Hacket Publishing Company.

Mackie, J.L., "Evil and Omnipotence" in Mind Vol. LXIV, no. 254  (1955).

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