The Problem of Evil (Aquinas 101)



What is evil, and why does God permit it in his creation? St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that in a general sense, evil is an absence or lack of what should be there. Technically speaking, we call this a privation, so evil is not a being or in nature. It’s the absence of something.

Suppose I say I’m going to draw a circle, and then I don’t finish it. You might say, “Hey, that’s a bad circle. Part of it’s missing.” You’re pointing out a privation. Notice though that I haven’t directly caused something that is bad in itself. The circle is good as far as it goes.

It just doesn’t go all the way. But wouldn’t it have been better if I had caused the whole circle to exist? Well, in general, yes, but perhaps there was a good reason why I didn’t. Maybe I was trying to illustrate what a privation is.

In that case, this defective circle would be an essential part of some larger project, some higher good–like bringing you to understand the problem of evil. This is how Aquinas approaches the problem of evil. God has created a changeable world of material things, and in order for such a world to exist,

It’s necessary that things grow, die, and decay. Aquinas calls these things natural evils. Gazelles eat grass, and lions eat gazelles. He sets this idea of natural evil in a larger context. It’s a necessary feature of the good of the whole ecosystem of the whole universe.

Now when Aquinas talks about the evil that human beings experience, he no longer speaks of natural evil. Rather, there are two unique types of evil that pertain to rational and free creatures. The evil of poena in Latin that’s translated typically as the evil of pain or penalty or

Punishment, and the evil of culpa in Latin translated as the evil of fault or of guilt. So, an example: Suppose Billy the Kid wakes up late for work. He doesn’t have a horse, so he steals his neighbor’s.

This is bad, of course, for his neighbor, but even more for Billy who has willfully refused to do what right reason tells him and has committed a serious injustice, an act unworthy of a human person.

This is what Aquinas calls the evil of fault or of guilt, and it is a kind of moral suicide. Arrested by the sheriff, Billy is sentenced to prison. This too is an evil for him because he’s now deprived of his freedom of movement.

But this second evil–being in prison–is not the same kind as the first. It’s an evil Billy suffers in response to an evil that he committed, and it’s called a penalty or punishment. How should we compare these two evils?

Well, the evil of fault is worse. By sinning Billy has freely chosen to make himself a bad man. By contrast, Billy’s punishment, while an evil for him in one sense is good and just, and it can even help Billy become good.

Especially if he accepts it and offers it in reparation for his fault. God never wills the evil of sin or of fault. Sin is our fault, not God’s. We choose some partial good contrary to the order of right reason, not caring about the

Damage that will result, and God permits us to do this, but he in no way is its cause. But God does will the punishment that follows from this moral evil both in order to restore the right ordering of justice and also to correct the wrongdoer,

Much like a judge and other honest citizens rightly desire a thief to be arrested and given a just punishment. Just like Billy can offer up his punishment in reparation for the evil he did, so we too can offer up all the evils we suffer in reparation for the sins we and others have

Committed. Let’s pose a harder question. Why does God permit the suffering of the innocent? We’re entering deep waters here, and we can only sketch a very brief answer. Human suffering, bodily death, undergoing persecution and injustice– these are very real and terrible evils, and they were not part of God’s original plan for us.

He created our first parents in grace with the special privilege of being free from illness, suffering, and death. Those evils only entered the world because of the sin of our first parents and we inherit the terrible consequences of this original sin: suffering, death, and even an inclination to sin.

It’s a lot like a baby born to a mother who’s a heroin addict. That baby inherits the terrible consequences of the mother’s addiction. In those who suffer them, they are the evils of pain or penalty. They can be the occasion for great moral nobility and goodness, like when a person offers his

Life to God in the midst of illness or when someone perseveres in the truth and even forgives an unjust persecutor. The hardest question is why does sin exist? Because every sin involves a privation, a lack of what should be there, we’re dealing with non-being and non-being is strictly speaking unintelligible.

So we can explain how a sin is possible. The creature focuses its attention and directs its will to some limited good disregarding the defect or disorder that that choice will cause, but we cannot explain why the creature does this. Because evil is incoherent in itself. It’s always stupid and self-defeating.

Why then does God permit it? Some have answered this question by using the so-called free will defense, saying that if there’s freedom, it’s impossible for God to prevent evil. This is not Aquinas’s answer, and he thinks it has serious philosophical problems. As we explained in the video on predestination and freedom,

God as our creator is the origin of our freedom and implants in us our desires for good, and so he can act within our will, moving it to good. So in any particular case, God could move us to freely choose the right thing. Why then doesn’t he always do so?

Here we’ve reached a mystery too deep for our minds, why God has created this world and not another. Aquinas doesn’t think we can say much more than this, but he does offer two quasi explanations that help us glimpse the deep wisdom of God’s providence.

First, we can be sure that God only permits evil for the sake of some much better and higher good, including not only our individual good, but the good of the whole creation. This is very mysterious, because we can’t see this whole, and we can’t conceive how permitting sin might lead to good.

But we know it’s true. God is infinitely powerful and infinitely good. Able to bring an even greater good out of every evil. We also know that we are very limited, especially in our understanding of the whole.

We’re kind of like a baby with a soiled diaper who screams because his father makes him take a bath. He doesn’t understand the good that his father is accomplishing for him through what seems to the baby like pointless suffering, but in reality, it’s for the baby’s good.

Finally, Aquinas says that God allows the defect of sin so that he can manifest his goodness in an even greater way as our savior. This is a beautiful and high truth, and it reaches its pinnacle in the cross.

There God himself takes upon his human shoulders the whole weight of our sins and bears them through terrible suffering, even unto death. He does this precisely so that his redeeming mercy and love for us sinners would shine out more clearly. So that we might be brought from sin unto forgiveness and eternal life.

For readings, podcasts, and more videos like this, go to Aquinas101.com. While you’re there, be sure to sign up for one of our free video courses on Aquinas. And don’t forget to like and share with your friends, because it matters what you think!

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PHILOSOPHY – Religion: The Problem of Evil [HD]



My name is Sally Haslanger, and I’m a professor of philosophy at MIT. Today, we’re going to discuss an argument in favor of atheism, in favor of the belief that God doesn’t exist. Let’s start with some definitions. “Theism” – that’s “the belief that God exists.” So, “atheism”: “the belief that God doesn’t exist.”

Rational theism is one form of theism. It’s the belief that there are evidential reasons to believe that God exists. Now, arational theism is the belief in God without evidence. There are plenty of people who are arational theists, because they believe in God based on faith. Faith is often thought to be believing something

In spite of the fact that you don’t have evidence for it, and it’s completely common for people to believe things without evidence, right? We believe things all the time based on wishful thinking. We believe it because it’s just in the air, or it’s convenient for us to believe it.

It makes us happy for us to believe it. All those sorts of things. But we’re talking here about evidence, where “evidence” is “some information “that lends credibility to the claim, “in the sense that it’s more likely to be true “if you have the evidence.” Okay, so arational theism, as I said,

Is a common position, but we’re not really gonna talk very much about it today. Irrational theism is the belief in God in spite of evidential reasons supporting atheism. Notice that this is quite different from arational theism. The belief in God without evidence, as mentioned,

Could be just on the basis of a lack of evidence. But irrational theism is when you hold belief in God, that is, when you hold theism, but there are clear supporting reasons for the opposing view, that is, for atheism. Now, that’s problematic, and we’re gonna look

A little bit further into why it’s problematic. Let’s move on to a few more definitions so that we’re clear what we’re talking about. “Contradiction” – what is a contradiction? A contradiction is when you have a set of beliefs that are not possibly true together.

So a set of beliefs is contradictory if and only if it’s not possible for all of them to be true. Here’s a simple example: “Today is Monday. It’s not the case that today is Monday.” Those can’t both be true together. Now, we’re making an assumption: mainly,

That we’re talking about right here right now. We’re not talking about something on the other side of the dateline. Considering “today is Monday,” and “it’s not today is Monday,” that’s a contradiction. Both of them can’t be true. So if you believe both of them, then you’re believing a contradiction.

Now, it’s not necessarily the case that a contradiction needs to involve only two statements. It can involve three statements. So “all birds can fly,” “penguins are birds,” “penguins can’t fly.” Not all of them can be true together, right? If you hold what it is to fly stable,

If you hold what it is to be a bird stable, then you can’t hold all these together and have just true beliefs. One of them has got to be false. Now you could say, “Well, maybe it’s not the case that all birds can fly,”

Or, “Maybe it’s not the case that all penguins are birds,” or maybe you could come up with a modification of what it is to fly so that penguins can fly. They’re really good underwater, for example. You watch them under water, they look like they’re flying. But that’s not really flying.

So you can’t hold all of these beliefs. You have to figure out which one you’re going to give up. Likewise, “today is Monday” and “it’s not the case that today is Monday” – you need to give one up. Okay, now why do you have to give one up? Some people say,

“Wait, we believe in contradictions all the time. “It’s just not obvious that we believe in contradictions.” Well, that’s true. We probably do have contradictory beliefs, but it’s not good to have contradictory beliefs. We want to get rid of our contradictory beliefs. Now there are a couple of reasons why.

First of all, it’s really good to have true beliefs. You don’t want to go around the world having false beliefs, cause it gets you into trouble. So if I believe that there’s no wall here, and I go walking into the wall, then that’s not so good.

False beliefs can get you into trouble in that way. They can lead you into problematic circumstances that you’d probably best not be in. So holding beliefs that are false is problematic, and if you hold contradictory beliefs, you know one of them has got to be false, and that’s bad.

Another thing is coherent action. Having contradictory beliefs makes it difficult to act coherently. Look at this one: “Today is Monday, and it’s not the case that today is Monday.” Suppose you have a dentist appointment on Monday. What do you do? Do you go or not?

You both believe that it is and it isn’t Monday, so what are you gonna do? It’s hard to act coherently and act in a sensible way to fulfill your obligations, etcetera. Since one of the beliefs you hold has got to be false, and you can’t act on two contradictory beliefs,

You can’t really act coherently. So we’re talking about whether God exists, and evidence for and against the existence of God. Now, there are many different conceptions of God or gods. I’m not trying to adjudicate what’s the right or best conception of God. But there’s a particular standard definition in the West,

That God is an all-perfect being, a being at least who has these three features: a god is all-knowing (which is to be omniscient), all-powerful (which is to be omnipotent), and to be wholly good (or omnibenevolent). So this being is perfect, is omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good, (or omnibenevolent).

We’re gonna call the combination of these features “OOO” (“O-O-O”) because they’re pretty good ooo features. Let’s go ahead and now look at the argument that suggests that atheism is the rational view to hold, the one that there’s the greatest evidence to believe. Here’s the first premise:

If God exists, he, she, or it would be OOO. Now I use “he, she, or it” because, of course, I don’t know whether there’s a God, and if there is, whether it’s a he, she, or it, or at least for the purposes of the discussion, we’re not gonna assume anything like that.

Okay, so that’s the first premise. Second: if an OOO god exits, there would be no evil. Well, why’s that? Well, if a god were all-knowing, then that god would know when evil was going to occur (or that it occurred), would have the power to make it not occur,

And is wholly good, so would also have the motivation to make it not occur. So this combination of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence suggests that if a god were truly OOO, there would be no evil. We assume for the purposes of argument that God exists. And we conclude, then, there is no evil.

So if God exists, he, she, or it would be OOO. If an OOO god exists, there would be no evil. God exists, so there is no evil. The problem is, there is evil. Well, at least, it seems there’s evil. That might be one of the questions that comes up

When we consider objections to the argument. It appears, certainly appears, that there’s evil: lynching, terrorism, the death of innocent babies. So for the moment, we’re gonna say there is evil. But look: “there is no evil,” “there is evil” – this is a contradiction. And so we have to reject one of these premises.

Well, this one, that God is OOO, that one is hard to reject because that’s just how we’ve defined what God is. This one – it seems straightforward. And so once we assume God exists, and we assume that there is evil in the world, which is hard to deny, we get a contradiction.

So we have to reject something. And so the thing that’s most likely to be false, according to the argument, is number (3), that God exists. So we conclude that God does not exist. Now this argument is a little bit truncated, as any argument is. It relies on two further assumptions.

First, a wholly good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can. And second, that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. But these just seem to be part of the definition of all-knowing, all-powerful, and wholly good. It’s just true by definition.

So here’s a way to think about it. If we assume a certain kind of God, an OOO God, and we really take seriously the perfection of that God Then once we assume that kind of God, and that there exists some evil in the world, then we’ve got a contradiction. So the theist is left with this position: either the theist has to say there is no evil in the world, or the theist has to give up

One of these features of their God. Those are your two options. Neither of them look very appealing. And so now we’re in a position to say, “If you don’t want to do that, “you are an irrational theist,” that there is compelling evidence that God does not exist,

God of this OOO kind does not exist, and yet, you believe anyway. That is to say, you believe a contradiction. You believe that there is evil, and there is no evil. You believe that there is this kind of god, there isn’t this kind of god.

We saw before that belief in contradictions is a bad thing, and you ought to avoid it wherever you can. And so this is the argument that you should not be a theist, because irrational theism is not an acceptable form of theism. Subtitles by the Amara.org community

#PHILOSOPHY #Religion #Problem #Evil

Jesus Christ: True God and True Man (Aquinas 101)



The Christian faith professes that Jesus Christ is true God and true man. That is, that the eternal Son of God, the Word of the Father, entered into time and assumed a complete human nature to himself, thus truly becoming man for us and for our salvation. This is the central claim of Christianity.

It’s a truth that’s at once beautiful, high and mysterious. St. Thomas Aquinas meditated deeply on it. In the third part of his Summa Theologiae, he sought to show its deep intelligibility and its coherence. Now, Aquinas always takes his starting point from the divine Revelation about Christ contained

In Sacred Scripture as understood according to the Church’s apostolic Tradition, including the great church councils that excluded false interpretations of what Scripture teaches about Christ. It helps to start by reviewing these early errors about Jesus so that we can better understand the mystery of the Incarnation.

In the early centuries of the Christian age, everyone agreed that God can neither change nor suffer, but this raises a big question. How can we affirm this while also saying that the Son of God became man and suffered on the cross?

One erroneous response to this was offered by the heresy called docetism, which comes from the Greek word meaning to appear or to seem. On this view, Jesus only seemed to be a man and therefore he only appeared to suffer.

This early heresy was ruled out very quickly by the Church as undermining what Scripture teaches, that Jesus really was human, he really did suffer and die on the cross for our sins, and he really rose from the dead in his human body on the third day. Another early error was adoptionism.

It claimed that Jesus was a man adopted by God the Father. Some thought this happened when he was baptized in the Jordan River, and that from that point onward, he comes to be called the Son of God. The Church rejected this too.

The Son of God did not assume a man who was already existing, rather the Son of God pre-existed in eternity with the Father and then became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary in time. Arius and the Arian heresy erred in a different

Direction by saying that the Son of God was not truly God, but was rather a creature. A high creature, but still a creature. The church condemned this at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where it professed that

The Son of God is, ” … true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.” That is, of the same being or substance as the Father. After this, the error of Nestorianism arose. Although there’s dispute today about what Nestorius actually taught, the Nestorian heresy

Seeks to insulate the eternal Son from change and suffering by distinguishing the man Jesus Christ from the divine Word. Nestorianism claimed that the Word dwells within the man Jesus according to grace, but that we can’t necessarily attribute to the Word all of the things that we say about Jesus.

For example, that he was born of Mary or that he suffered on the cross. The church condemned this at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD; and two decades later, the Council of Chalcedon formulated a definitive statement of the Church’s belief in Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is one person who is true God and true man. To put this more precisely, the eternal Son of God is a divine person who assumes a complete human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary body and soul, having a human mind and a human will.

From that point forward then, he subsists in two natures, the divine nature and an individual human nature. These two natures are united in the subsisting person of the Son, and this is called the hypostatic union, which comes from the Greek word hypostatis, which means a subsisting individual. Aquinas studied these early church councils

Carefully, and he provides an insightful synthesis of their teaching. The key points that he makes can be summarized like this. First, when we say that this man Jesus Christ really is God, we’re making a metaphysical claim about being.

Its foundation is the hypostatic union; that is, that the two natures of Christ are truly united in his person. In fact, Aquinas says that person is a metaphysical term. It means a subsisting individual of a rational nature.

So the union of man and God in Christ is not simply by indwelling or by habitual grace, rather the divine person of the Word now subsists in, or according to, a complete human nature in addition to the divine nature. Second, the union of the divinity and humanity

In Christ doesn’t change either of these natures. The Son is and remains fully and truly divine, eternal and unchanging as God. Likewise, the humanity of Christ is not absorbed into the divinity, it remains human, which means it’s in time, it can change, and it can and does suffer.

Next, this union is completely unique. It’s not an accidental union like the way a quality exists in a substance, and it’s not like a human person who puts on new clothes. Aquinas actually uses an analogy to what we would today call an organ transplant. Suppose you received a transplant of a third arm.

Now this arm left to itself won’t continue to exist for very long on its own disconnected from a body; but once it’s joined to your body, it begins to exist by your existence or the subsistence of your soul.

That is, your soul is the principle of your body’s life, and now it is animating this new addition to your body, this transplanted arm. Aquinas doesn’t think this is a perfect analogy, especially because an individual human nature is the sort of thing that normally does exist

On its own, and that’s what the Son is assuming. But this analogy does help us understand that in Christ the eternal Son doesn’t change in his divinity; rather, he joins an individual human nature to himself so that from its first

Moment, that human reality subsists according to the very being of the person of the Son. The man Jesus is the Son in person. St. Thomas follows the Church Fathers in saying that because of the hypostatic union, the humanity of Christ is like an instrument joined to the person of the Word.

Think of a saw in the hand of a carpenter. The saw provides something important. Because it’s iron, it can be sharpened and can cut wood. That’s something that the carpenter’s hand by itself can’t do. But the saw isn’t able to cut wood without the activity of the carpenter.

So by being taken up into the carpenter’s activity, the saw now shares in what the carpenter does. The carpenter is making a bench. This is also what happens in the Incarnation. The eternal Word of God takes up a human nature; and now it’s not a separated instrument like

A saw is separated from your hand, but rather an instrument that is conjoined in the person of the Son himself. In his divine nature as a pure spirit, the Word of God cannot be seen by human eyes. He can’t walk on the shores of Galilee. He can’t lay hands on a blind man.

Above all, in his divine nature, he cannot suffer and die. But by the hypostatic union, the Son assumes a human nature as his instrument, and he uses that humanity so that he himself acting in person can do all those things as man. This is a wonderful truth of the Christian faith.

The Word of God is not only present in the world as God, but joins a creature to himself in the most intimate of all unions. In doing this, he raises up our fallen humanity and creates it anew. Indeed, he lifts it unsurpassingly high to the very divinity itself.

As St. Thomas says following Pope St. Leo the Great, “This is a marvelous exchange. He humbled himself to share in our humanity so that we might be raised up to share in his divinity.” For readings, podcasts and more videos like this, go to Aquinas101.com.

While you’re there, be sure to sign up for one of our free video courses on Aquinas. And don’t forget to like and share with your friends, because it matters what you think.

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The Problem of Evil: Crash Course Philosophy #13



Crash Course Philosophy is brought to you by Squarespace Squarespace: share your passion with the world. Why is the sky blue? Which came first: orange the color or orange the fruit? And why is C3PO afraid of everything? Like, who decided it was a good idea to teach a droid to experience fear?

There are some questions that we ask ourselves, either as kids, or adults, or both. They’re questions about weird, everyday things, and they’re weird because most of us don’t know the answers to them offhand. But most of the time, those questions turn out to be pretty answerable.

Like, for the ones I just mentioned, the short answers are: Because of the way photons interact with the molecules in the atmosphere. …the fruit; And…uh…’cause that’s what George Lucas wanted. Maybe because 3PO’s a protocol droid, and they need to be able to relate to humans.

Though, he could stand to turn his fear settings down a notch. Now, as you know, philosophers have a soft spot for questions that can never be answered. Most of the time, these puzzles make for great thought experiments – tests of our skills in logic and argument.

But there are some questions whose very lack of an answer can be downright troubling. Unlike the occasional fluke of physics or bit of Star Wars trivia, there’s a part of us that really wants, or even needs to have an answer to these things.

For the past month or so, we’ve been exploring the philosophy of religion, and we’ve been doing it mainly from a theistic perspective, looking into arguments that justify belief in God. But one of the most persistent challenges to god’s existence is also the root of one of the most-asked,

But least answerable, questions that we, as thinking beings, face. Why is there evil? [Theme Music] Evil comes in many forms. And likewise, for philosophers, poses many problems, especially vis a vis the existence of god. First, there’s what’s known as the logical problem of evil.

Like all rational people, theists can’t help but acknowledge that the world is full of evil. And here, we’re understanding “evil” to be all manner of bad stuff – like, not just Hitler or Darth Vader or Moriarty.

It’s everything that’s in the vast spectrum of badness, from stubbed toes to plagues and everything in between. Theists and atheists both agree that evil exists in this way. But they disagree about the next part. Many theists believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God.

But atheists argue that this creates a contradiction – a set of beliefs that can’t all be true at the same time. Because, evil is bad, right – whether it’s stubbed toes or genocide or paper cuts or epidemics? So, if there’s really an all-knowing God out there, he knows about all the evil.

He might even know about it before it happens. And if he’s all-powerful, he could stop it. And if he’s all-good, then he would want to stop it. And yet he doesn’t. The evil continues. Philosophically rational people shouldn’t hold inconsistent beliefs,

So atheists argue that you’re going to have to give something up – and the thing to give up is God. Some theists, however, take a different route. They choose to give up one or more divine attributes. They argue that maybe God isn’t powerful enough to stop evil,

Or maybe he’s not knowledgeable enough to know about it, or maybe he’s not even good enough to care about stopping it. That might sound weird to some of you, but if you’ve ever heard someone say that God is envious, or petty, or jealous, that’s basically what they’re doing –

They’re acknowledging the possibility that God is not actually good. If you’ve ever checked out the Old Testament, there is a God there who has some anger issues – one who’s not at all opposed to wiping out entire populations just because of some bad behavior.

Still, despite this scriptural evidence, many theists are committed to God’s omni-attributes, and are thus stuck with a problem. They have to resolve the logical problem of evil and find some way to explain why God would allow evil into the world.

And if you can do that, then you are presenting what is known as a theodicy. A theodicy is an attempt to show that the existence of evil doesn’t rule out the possibility of God’s existence. Yes, this is such a big deal that there’s a word for it.

And the most popular theodicy is called The Free Will Defense. This argument holds that God maximized the goodness in the world by creating free beings. And being free means that we have the choice to do evil things – a choice that some of us exercise.

This theodicy says that God doesn’t create evil, but evil can’t be avoided without depriving us of our freedom. And a world without freedom would be a worse place overall. This explanation preserves God’s goodness, because he created the best possible world, and also preserves his omnipotence and omniscience, because,

Although he does know about evil and could stop it, he has a good reason not to – to ensure our freedom. The problem is, the free will defense really only really addresses what’s known as moral evil – or the evil committed, on purpose, by humans.

Now, we’re certainly responsible for a lot of bad stuff, but you can’t blame us for everything. We can’t be held responsible for the fact that the plates of the earth sometimes shift, causing destructive earthquakes, or that a storm might knock a tree over that falls onto someone’s house.

This type of evil – the stuff we’re not responsible for – is called natural evil, and the free will defense can’t resolve natural evil. Religion is one of those philosophical issues that can make it hard for us to consider anything objectively.

That’s where fiction comes in handy because fictional stories can let us see how hypothetical people deal with hypothetical situations. And with that in mind, let’s go to the Thought Bubble for some Flash Philosophy! Let’s consider the case of Ivan, a good Russian who decides to break up with God.

In the novel The Brothers Karamozov, 19th century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky presents us with Ivan, a man who claims to believe in God. But Ivan finds the fact that God allows evil to exist to be so unforgivable, that he decides worshipping such a god would be, just, unconscionable.

Ivan goes so far as to declare that he is “returning his ticket” to heaven. If the same God who allows evil – particularly the suffering and death of children – is also saving a cozy place in paradise for Ivan, well, Ivan wants nothing to do with it.

So, his way out of the problem of evil is to deny God’s goodness, and to conclude that a bad God is not only unworthy of his worship, he’s also not someone Ivan wants to spend eternity with. It’s like the ultimate un-friending.

Now, some readers have found Ivan’s decision to be noble, and full of integrity. After all, if you really think God is letting all of this bad stuff happen, why would you want to be on his team?

But other people think Ivan is being irrational – why condemn yourself to eternity in hell on principle? For theists, it’s another question that doesn’t have an easy answer. Thanks, Thought Bubble! Now, unlike Ivan, a lot of people aren’t willing to give up their ticket to heaven.

So they need to work on a way to keeping believing in, and worshipping, God, even though evil is still a thing. One way to do that, is to argue that good can’t exist without its opposite. The idea here is that you can’t understand the concept of pleasure without pain.

We don’t know what it feels like to be warm if we haven’t been cold. We can’t understand the goodness of filling our bellies if we’ve never been hungry. But there’s also another way, though it involves a little more work on your part.

20th century English philosopher of religion John Hick offered what’s known as the soul-making theodicy. Unlike the traditional view that God created a perfect world, which we ruined through our own poor choices, Hick argued that God deliberately creates us “unfinished,”

And our earthly lives are designed to toughen us up, in a sense, kinda like boot camp. The harshness of life, Hick said, gives us a robust texture and character that wouldn’t be possible without an imperfect world. Hick said that we’re not just God’s little pets, and he’s not our benevolent owner,

Whose sole job is to keep us in a safe, comfortable environment. Instead, he wants to build us, to train us, into a particular kind of being. So we need an environment that’s suited to the sort of growth that he wants – the sort that this world makes possible.

A lot of people find these and other theodicies to be pretty compelling. However, the problem of evil actually goes a step deeper. What we’ve been talking about so far is the logical problem of evil. This problem can be resolved, if we can explain why there’s evil.

But there’s also the evidential problem of evil. This problem points out that we might be able to explain why evil exists, but we still can’t explain why there’s so much evil in the world. For instance, let’s say that it’s true that we really do need evil in order to understand goodness.

In that case, why can’t we understand the contrast through some sort of low-level evil – like paper cuts and head colds and having to work straight through our lunch hour every now and then? I mean, slow, painful deaths from cancer, and city-destroying hurricanes…

They don’t really add anything valuable to our understanding of goodness. Do they? If God were truly good, and if a negative contrast were really needed in order for us to understand the goodness of the world, then why wouldn’t he give us just the very minimum dosage of necessary to achieve that goal?

A counterargument might suggest that there’s always a good that corresponds to, and is proportionate to, any evil. But empirically, such goodness is really hard to find. What good, for example, could possibly correspond to the horrors of a genocide? In cases like this, Hick’s soul-making doesn’t seem to cut it.

You can’t really argue that “whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” because, sometimes, evil does kill us. A lot of us. And sometimes it kills us before we have a chance to grow and learn from the suffering we’ve endured.

Despite these and other philosophical sticking points, a lot of people have found a theodicy that satisfies them – one that they believe reconciles the apparent evil in the world with God’s existence. Others find all of these theodicies to be flawed, and they reject God’s omni-nature,

Preserving their belief in God by finding him to be less than perfectly powerful, or knowledgeable, or good. Still others are convinced that the evil in the world is simply incompatible with the existence of a god, or at least any god worth worshipping.

Wherever you end up, this is a problem that needs to be grappled with. And you’ll probably be thinking about it long after this lesson has ended. After all, today we have considered the biggest problem in theism – the problem of evil.

We’ve thought about different theodicies – or ways that we might reconcile the existence of evil and the existence of god, and we’ve explored whether those responses are sufficient. Next time, we’ll consider what kinds of justification we need to have for our religious beliefs.

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