Lecture 5 (outline): God and Evil

  

1     God and Evil

 It is hard to deny that there is much that is unsatisfactory with the world.  While pleasure and happiness are good, pain and suffering, which are clearly bad, abound. There are many things which can ruin our happiness, and cause pain and suffering:  disease, starvation , poverty, natural disasters, human cruelty and indifference, to name just a few.  I will use the term “evil” to cover all that is bad, all that detracts from goodness.  I will reserve the term “moral evil” for that evil which is under the voluntary control of persons (whether human or superhuman).

So it is implausible to deny that:
 

 (a)   Evil exists.
Some have argued that (a) is in fact false—that the appearance of evil in the world is an illusion.  But the systematic illusion of such widespread evil would itself be an evil: an evil illusion.  Given our experience of the world we must accept that (a) is true in some sense of the word 'evil'.  Theism entails another existence claim, (b):
 
 (b)  God exists.
It is the apparent difficulty of reconciling (a) and (b) which generates the theistic problem of evil.

There are many other problems of evil which people face regardless of their religious beliefs: how to make sense of life in the face of evil, how to cope with evil and suffering in their own lives.  But the theist has a special problem:  why should God allow all this evil?  This particular problem does not arise for atheists.
 
 

2 The logical problem of evil

Some philosophers have claimed that (a) and (b) are logically incompatible.  If they are then, because (a) is evidently true, (b) must be false.  However, on the face of it (a) and (b) are not obviously contradictory.  We require an argument to show that if one were true the other would have to be false.  Can such an argument be supplied.  We have shown that the concept of God entails (c) and (d), and we can consider two claims, (e) and (f) which flesh these out:
 
 (c)   God is all-good.
 (d)   God is all-powerful.
 (e)   God is all-knowing.
 (f)   An all-good being would do everything within its power to eliminate the evil and suffering that it knew about.
 (g)   An all-powerful being could do anything.
 (h)   An all-knowing being would know everything about what evil and suffering there is,
The five assumptions, (b) - (h), do entail that there is no evil or suffering.  Thus at least one of (a) - (h) is false.  This is the traditional logical problem of evil for theism.
 
 

3    God's powers and responsiblities

What should an all-good all-powerful being do about evil?

We have to be careful how we are to understand (g).  An all-powerful being can bring about any logically possible state of affairs provided it is logically possible s/he bring about.  Still, there seems no contradiction involved in God performing the task of destroying (or preventing) all evil and suffering.  One way to achieve this would be to close the whole show down.  Do (f), (g) and (h) require that God do this?

The trouble with such a drastic solution is that it involves eliminating lots of good things.  (Even if these good things are an illusion the illusion is a good one.)  Sometimes we say of a suffering or destructive animal that it would be better if it did not exist.  Sometimes we say that of a human being, though many feel it is harder to justify this.  We judge ending human lives to be wrong partly because we judge human beings to be valuable additions to the universe.  So even if there are some evils attached to an item, destroying that item may not maximize goodness.  To eliminate a particular evil may involve lowering the excess of good over evil.  We can now see that (f) has to be modified.

 (f')   An all-good being would do everything within its power to ensure the best possible, or most valuable, state of affairs.

The best possible state of affairs may be one in which there is some evil, or in which there is a real possibility of evil.  It may be that there are some evils which are necessary to the maximization of goodness.  Someone who argues that the Supreme Being would be obliged to create a world completely free of evil has a difficult task on his hands.  He will have to demonstrate that the best possible world is one in which there is not one jot or tittle of evil.
 

4     The value of the virtues

Pleasure and happiness are good.  Pain and suffering are bad.  Call these (respectively) FIRST-ORDER goods and FIRST-ORDER  evils.  Are  first order-goods and first-order evils the only goods and evils there are?  Maybe not.

Consider the the virtues, like compassion, honesty, courage, integrity. These character traits may promote pleasure and happiness, and so they may be instrumentally valuable to the extent that they are effective.  But they also seem to be good in themselves.  Even if the courageous person does not succeed in her attempt to rescue the boy drowning in the rip, we still admire and praise her courage and compassion.  And we may judge a life of courage and compassion (like Mother Theresa’s) to be more valuable overall than a life full of pleasure and happiness (like Hugh Heffner’s).

There can be no courage or compassion in a world in which pleasure and happiness are guaranteed for all.  Good character traits like these require the existence of first-order goods and evils.  I will call the virtues  SECOND-ORDER goods.

If the virtues are good in themselves hen the best of all possible worlds may be one in which there are not only first-order goods but second-order goods as well.  However virtues can only be developed and maintained in a world in which suffering is a real and present danger.  So the best of all worlds may contain (first-order) evils (pain and suffering) as necessary concomitants of some very important  (second-order) goods (the virtues). The value of those second-order goods may outweigh the disvalue of the first-order evils.
 

5 The value of freedom

The second-order goods (virtues) are matched by second-order evils (vices, or moral evils). There is no shortage of vice in the world.  If you have any doubts about that then go to the websie of  of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  There you will see pictures of horrendous atrocities committed by human beings againt their fellow human beings, and such attempts at genocide have become all too familiar—in Cambodia in the 1970s, in Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990s amongst others,

Why are vices necessary to the maximization of good?  The usual answer is the free-will defense.  It is good that there are virtuous people and God could have created virtuous automata.  But it is better that people freely choose to be virtuous, rather than being born virtuous or having virtue thrust upon them.   So the best possible world is one in which there are free creatures who freely choose to be virtuous.

 

Questions:  Could God control free creatures, having once created them?  Is freedom intrinsically valuable?  (That is, is it valuable in itself, or valuable because of what other things it makes possible?)  How valuable is freedom?  Does it always outweigh the disvalue of the freely chosen evil acts?
Think carefully about these three questions: they go to the heart of the matter.

Firstly, could God control free creatures?  On any particular occasion on which a free agent has a choice s/he might  freely choose the good.  (That is part of what is meant by her being free.)  So, it is just possible that on all occasions she might freely choose the good.  Now if that is a possibility for one human agent it is presumably a possibility (albeit an unlikely one) for all human agents.  If all agents are free then they might  all freely choose the good.  That, at least, is a logical possibility: there is no logical contradiction involved in it.  Imagine a world in which all agents do freely choose the good.  In such a world there would be present all the values that freedom makes possible, and none of the disvalues.  It would be the best of all possible worlds.  If God is omnipotent then surely God can create any possible world.  And so, why has God not created a world in which all free agents freely choose the good?

There seems to be something wrong with this objection.  God can create free agents, and free agents might well freely choose the good.  In that sense God might be lucky and create free agents who, as it happens, freely choose the good.  But God cannot make an free agent freely choose the good.  To do that God would have to both endow the agent with freedom and then manipulate the agent's choice (i.e.  deprive the agent of freedom): and that would be logically impossible.  Does it then follow that God is not omnipotent? No: this is one of those tasks such that it is logically impossible for God to perform it, and such tasks do not tell against God's omnipotence.  Then are there logically possible states of affairs that God is powerless to create?  Yes:  for example, although it is logically possible that God has never existed (ruling out the ontological argument) God cannot make it the case God has never existed.  That is a logically possible state of affairs which it is logically impossible for God to bring about.

So let us suppose that God cannot both create free creatures and control their choices.  It may well be true to say that human beings are free creatures, and that much of the evil in the world can be traced to their free decisions.  But, according to theism, God created these free creatures knowing full well that they might choose evil.  Moreover, if God exists then God continues to sustain a world in which free creatures freely choose evil.  So God is responsible both for the creation of free agents and for their continued existence.  To what extent, then, can the responsibility for the freely chosen evil actions of those creatures be detached from God?  Clearly it can be so detached only if either (a) human freedom itself is of such enormous value that it outweighs the disvalue of whatever freely chosen evil acts which it makes possible; or (b) there was an exceedingly good chance that human freedom would make possible things of enormous value which would not have been possible without such freedom.

(a) seems implausible.  After all, we don't allow people to go about freely murdering, raping, and pillaging.  We judge it better to curtail their freedom rather than to suffer the evil effects of their freely chosen evil acts.  Of course we might be wrong about this, but it seems highly unlikely.

So something like (b) must be true.  God must have taken a risk in creating free creatures: a risk that, improbably, went badly wrong.  Still, some risks are justifiable even if they do turn out for the worst.  The key question then is whether or not it is justifiable to create free agents who might well run amok, as human beings have done.  Think about procreation: many of us procreate, fully believing that our offspring will be free agents.  As free agents they might run amok.  But most of us think the risk is justifiable.  But is it?
 

6    What about the rest of creation?

The free-will defense is about the most promising tack for a theist to take.  But what about the misery and suffering induced by billions of year's of evolution prior to the arrival of free-agents on the scene?  What could justify that?