What is a gracious, effective response to someone who pushes away from the idea of God because of the problem of evil? Well, my first question is, what exactly is the problem? Now, of course I’m— this is a question
I’m asking to get the other person to spell it out because it’s not that I am ignorant about the kinds of ways people factor in the problem of evil into the existence of God. I want them to
Spell it out because i actually think there are serious problems with using evil as an argument against God. So, I want them to spell it out. Now, I know the way it’s usually characterized.
Well, if you think God is good and he’s powerful, and that would be God, right? But if he’s good, he’d want to get rid of all evil. If he’s powerful, he’d be able to get all rid of all evil, but
There’s evil, right? So there you go. God probably doesn’t exist. And it turns out, though that sounds like an argument. Like a step-by-step syllogistic argument leading from premises to a conclusion, it turns out that when you press the issue, you can’t build a valid argument from those facts.
If God were good, for example, then he wouldn’t allow any evil. Really? Is that true? That’s a question, and we talk about this— I talk about this— I’m looking at you because I’m saying “we” because you were such a help to me in editing The Story of Reality, but you recall
From The Story of Reality how I talk about my daughters don’t like shots, you know? They don’t like that’s evil for them because it causes them pain, but Daddy makes them get shots, so why does he do that? Because Daddy’s evil? No. Because I know that the short-term evil to them is
Going to result in a longer term good. And so there is a moral justification for the shorter term bad. All that does is point out that it certainly could be possible, and that’s a very simple illustration. There’s dozens and dozens we can think of. It certainly is possible how something bad
Could be justified. There could be a morally sufficient reason for allowing it because it leads to something good, okay? Or maybe something bad that prevents something even worse from happening. So, there’s different ways to construe this,
To demonstrate that it is not the case that if God were good he would never allow anything evil. Rather, he could have a morally sufficient reason for allowing it for a time. And that, by the way, is all we need to parry the objection about the problem of evil.
Now, the possibility that he could have a reason, we don’t have to tell them what that reason is. Remember, the type of objection that this is is a strong defeater. It’s not possible that there
Is a God because there’s evil in the world, and my response is, well, wait a minute. Maybe so. And this, by the way, I step out a little step by step in The Story of Reality. So, anybody wants to go
There, they can see the chapter where I deal with this. It’s not tricky, but it has some steps to it. This is why it makes a little bit more difficult when you’re having a conversation with somebody. Somebody’s even listening to this saying, “Well, I can’t remember all that stuff that he just said.”
Well, that’s true, I can understand that. But if you don’t know why the problem of evil is not a good argument against God, but a good argument for God, then it’s going to be hard for you to make
That point. And that, I think, is the most powerful point that can be made from the problem of evil. This helps us. Evil is on our side, in that sense, because if there were no God, there would be no evil at all…Because there’d be no lawmaker. It’s just molecules clashing in the
Universe. Okay, so then, what is wrong? Says who? Your grandma? Kind of thing. So sometimes I get to the point in a little different way. What’s the alternative? So, somebody says, “Well, there can’t be any God, there’s evil in the world.” Really? There’s real evil? What do
You mean by evil? So, I would just want them to emphasize that, okay? So, if there is no God, how can there be evil? What do you mean? Well, there’s no lawmaker. There would be no law, alright?
Notice, those are questions, and I’m trying to lead to make this point, or what’s the alternative? Well, the alternative is there is no God, okay? Let’s say there is no God then, right? So, what makes
Anything evil? You just complained about the problem of evil. There must be evil in the world, right? So what do you make of evil now that God doesn’t exist? How do you get traction to even complain
About evil in the world? You can’t. And I make this point again in The Story of Reality because people think that they somehow solve the problem of evil by getting God out of the
Equation. And what I point out is, okay, now you got God out of the equation, okay? Now you’re an atheist. Yeah. Okay, that’s our view now. Right. How do you solve the problem of evil? What do you mean? Well,
You got God out of the picture. You didn’t get rid of evil. You still got all the things that you used to call evil. They still are existing, and you still probably consider them evil, okay? Now, solve
The problem. The point I’m making is, atheism can give you no traction to even make sense out of evil to begin with. And if somebody wants to say, well, okay, then evil is just an illusion of evolution or something. Really? Wait, just a few moments ago, you’re saying it’s so real
That it disqualifies the existence of God, and now you want to say it’s an illusion? See, our answer makes sense of all the facts. We don’t have to play games like that. The world is broken. That’s why there’s evil in the world. Broken means it ain’t the way it’s supposed
To be. It started out one way, and now it’s a different way. So these are all— and we broke it. And so, we’re responsible. Some people haven’t thought about it this way, Amy, but our whole story
Is about the problem of evil. It starts in the third chapter, it doesn’t get solved till 66 books later. If there was no problem of evil, we’d have no story. We’d have no Christianity. So in a certain sense, we could say that evil is quite at home in our view.
It’s central to our story, and our story is not over yet. But it has no place in an atheistic worldview. It does not make any sense whatsoever in an atheistic worldview. Now, people can get that notion in their mind, and I do walk through fairly carefully
Not only The Story of Reality, but in the last couple chapters of the book on Relativism that Dr. Beckwith and I wrote called, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air” and lots of things we’ve
Done on the air here, and lots of things we have on the internet makes the same point. If there is no God, there is no morality. But there is a morality, since the problem of evil, therefore, there is a
God. That’s your basic modus tollens argument for God. Moral argument for the existence of God.
Hi, my name is Greg Ganssle, and I’m a part-time lecturer[br]in the Department of Philosophy at Yale University, and a senior fellow at the Rivendell Institute. Today we’re going to talk about part of the philosophical problem of evil. The philosophical problem[br]of evil is an argument beginning with facts about evil,
Leading to the conclusion either that God does not exist, or that[br]it’s most likely the case that God does not exist. So first we need to make a distinction. There’s what has been[br]called “a deductive,” or “the logical problem of evil,” and then there’s what has been called “the evidential problem of evil”.
Deductive or logical problem of evil, I like to call “the[br]square circle objection” or “the charge of contradiction.” It is an argument that to believe that God exists, and that evil exists, is like believing in square circles. There’s a contradiction. The evidential problem, on the other hand, I like to call “the unicorn objection.”
It is not that there’s a contradiction, but it’s pretty hard to believe in God in light of facts about evil. Today I’m going to talk about[br]the logical problem of evil, and how theists, or[br]philosophers who believe in God, begin to answer it. So, first we need to look at what is
The charge of contradiction. Where is the contradiction found? I’m following a famous paper by a British philosopher named John Mackie who began his argument[br]with a couple of premises. Premise one: God exists,[br]and is wholly good, omnipotent, and omniscient. The second premise is that evil exists. So we have God on the one hand,
And evil on the other hand. His aim is to show that these two together entail or lead to a contradiction. He recognizes that the contradiction is not obvious at first. We have to amplify “What does it mean for God to be wholly good,[br]omnipotent, and omniscient?” Once we amplify this, we can see
How these premises together[br]lead to a contradiction. In order to amplify this, he[br]adds two additional premises. Premise three: There are no[br]limits to what an omnipotent, omniscient being can do. Premise four: A good[br]being always eliminates or prevents evil as far as it can. That’s part of what it[br]means to be a good being.
So, Mackie has four premises, and he tries to derive a[br]contradiction from them. We can see pretty clearly[br]that he can succeed. We can take step number five: God can eliminate or prevent[br]all of the evil there is. If premise one is true and God[br]is all-powerful, omnipotent, then he’s powerful enough[br]to eliminate all evil.
Premise six: God will eliminate or prevent all of the evil that there[br]is, because he is good. If premise one is true[br]and God is wholly good, and premise four is true “a good being always[br]eliminates or prevents evil as far as it can,” then step six is true. God will eliminate or prevent
All of the evil that he can[br]eliminate because he is good. So from these six steps, we can see that a contradiction follows. If step five and step six are true, then we get the conclusion that God does eliminate[br]or prevent all evil. Well, if God eliminates[br]and prevents all evil,
Then step eight is true: there is no evil. But the final step, step nine, builds on premise two, the[br]premise that evil exists. And we get a statement “There is evil and there is no evil.” And that is the explicit contradiction. Something is wrong with a valid argument that leads to a contradiction.
Some premise has to be rejected. John Mackie and other atheists think premise one needs to be rejected. It’s not true that God[br]exists and is wholly good, omnipotent, and omniscient. Theists, or philosophers who[br]believe that God does exist, they think the problem is[br]not with the first premise, nor is it with the second premise,
Because it’s pretty[br]obvious that evil exists. Rather, they look carefully[br]at the additional premises, premise three and premise four. Subtitles by the Amara.org community
Alright, today we’re going to be looking at something called: Now, before we get started, I want to make it clear that I’m not here to push my own position or agenda. I’m here to put to the test some of our most closely held beliefs,
And see if they hold up to the high standards of what we’re all really searching for… Before we get started, one more quick caveat: This is a basic introduction to The Problem of Evil. If you want something more philosophically rigorous, I suggest you do some reading, read: and a response to that:
They do a good job of providing a rigorous, yet – for the most part – accessible debate on this problem. With that out of the way… Now, what we’re doing here is we’re testing beliefs. We’re testing closely held beliefs, and today we’re testing one of the biggest ones of them all:
The belief that God exists! The Problem of Evil is going to help us see if this belief can hold up to the high bar of knowledge that we sent. Not do we want to believe God exists? But can we know that God exists?
Before we go, we need to know who this is a problem for. This is a problem for people who believe in God. This is a problem for people who believe in a specific kind of God. It’s a God that is: If this God, isn’t your God, this isn’t your problem 😉
Now there are 2 versions of The Problem of Evil that we’re going to be looking at: The Logical Problem of Evil and the Evidential Problem of Evil. The Logical Problem of Evil is generally considered more…philosophical, but it packs a bigger punch!
It’s a little harder to grasp for the everyday person. But, it’s more powerful to the rational mind! The Evidential Problem of Evil – on the other hand – is more…convincing (usually to people). In fact, it’s convinced a lot more people than the logical one has.
But…it’s less powerful when it comes to actual philosophical power. Someone who really believes in God can get out of the Evidential Problem fairly easily, alright? Okay, we’ll start with The Logical Problem. The Logical Problem states that there are 4 Inconsistent Propositions that we hold to be true.
Inconsistent Propositions means that they can’t all be true, so we’re gonna have to get rid of one of them. So, what are those 4 propositions? They are: We read about that earlier. If you believe in a 3-O God – omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent –
Then you believe that God is all-knowing, so you’re on board so far. Omnibenevolence, we’re already there. Guess what number 3 is? So, what is the mysterious number 4? It’s the place the problem gets its name, it is: The idea being – that if there were an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God –
That God would stop Evil from existing. Let’s look at an example, to see how this works: So you have a murderer, for example, – and let’s give our murder a knife – and this murder is going to… …do something to this victim. I think we all know what’s going to happen… …but…
This Evil, I’m sure we would all consider this evil, if you wouldn’t, put something you would consider evil in there… …would be, by an all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful God, stopped, right? God would come in – unleash the Hand of God – …and Evil wouldn’t happen… But that doesn’t happen… …evil exists… So
Supposedly, to get out of this argument, there are some escape routes, 5 to be specific: You can say that: Maybe God’s all-good and all-powerful, but he just doesn’t know about the evil going on in the world. Maybe he’s very far away. Maybe he’s only in certain places at certain times.
He does the best he can, but he just doesn’t know about all the evil… Possibility, but it doesn’t give us the God we’re looking for. God is mean, or maybe God just doesn’t care? He can stop the evil, he knows about the evil, but he doesn’t want to, or he chooses not to.
Maybe he’s vengeful? A lot of possibilities here, but once again, it doesn’t give us the God we’re looking for. Or finally, maybe God is weak? God can’t stop evil. He knows about it. He wants to stop it, but he can’t stop it.
Once again, it doesn’t give us an all-powerful God, and that’s exactly what we’re looking for. Another way out of this, is to claim that evil doesn’t exist. This is a little sketchy as far as things go, because if you think that, Evil as a concept doesn’t exist,
Then you probably don’t think that God can be all-good, because you don’t really believe in good and evil. And if you’re gonna claim that evil doesn’t happen in the world, well…I want to see your definition of “evil.” That’s a little sketchy as far as escape routes go…but there is a 5th escape route,
Which is probably going to be what a lot of our defenders of God take, and that’s: In fact, that we can hold all 4 of our premises – God is all-knowing, God is all-good, evil exists, and God is all-powerful – together, without committing any inconsistencies.
Now, we’re going to talk about the Evidential Problem of Evil. This problem, is a little less philosophical than a Logical problem. It doesn’t go to premise, premise, conclusion. It more says, “Well, let’s look at the evidence out in the world.” Hence the name Evidential Problem.
Look at the evidence out in the world, and see – from this evidence – what’s more likely a conclusion to draw: That God exists, or that God doesn’t exist. Let’s see I’ll present you with some evidence… …you make up your own mind…
The idea here, of course, is that, if you have seen the horrors that go on in this world… Or if you suffered great trauma… You might come to conclude that: No God could allow such a thing to exist.
The only conclusion you can draw based on the evidence, is that God does not exist? On my count, there are three places you could have ended up after all of that argument: You could say, “Despite The Problem of Evil, God still exists.”
You could say that, “The Problem of Evil has convinced me. I believe God is dead. God does not exist.” Either of these positions, however, I think it’s unsubstantiated in some ways. God exists? We haven’t really had an argument for God’s existence.
And, if The Problem of Evil has done anything, it’s called into doubt God’s existence. On the other hand, God is dead? I’m not so sure? Because, while The Problem of Evil has given us a pretty strong argument for a specific kind of God,
It hasn’t given us an argument against all gods, nor has it resolved the little concern we mentioned earlier… About what if we can find a way to show that those 4 propositions aren’t inconsistent. In fact, planning it is a good job of attempting to, in our next video.
So, what I would say, our only option here: To stay rational, is to suspend judgment. In other words, to say, “God might exist, God might not exist.” One way or another, I don’t have enough information for either of those beliefs to rise to the level of knowledge.
I’ll leave you with a quote from David Hume, that fairly succinctly sums up… The Problem of Evil If you enjoyed this video you’d like to see more or you’d like to put some of your own beliefs to the test, please Watch some more videos and visit Carneades.org…and stay sceptical everybody! 😉
We are all well aware of the suffering and evil in the world: horrific suffering, unthinkable evil. How then can anyone believe in the existence of an all-loving, all-powerful God? And if God does exist, why would anyone want to worship Him? Epicurus framed the logical problem of suffering and evil like this:
If God is willing to prevent evil but not able, then he’s not all-powerful. If he is able to prevent evil but not willing, he is not good. But if he is both willing and able, how can evil exist? And if he is neither
Able nor willing, then why call him God? In other words, it’s logically impossible for God and suffering to both exist, but we know full well that suffering exists. Therefore, God does not. Is this a good argument? Let’s look at it more closely.
Are these two statements logically inconsistent? No; here is an example of two logically inconsistent statements. David can’t be both married and a bachelor, but there is no explicit contradiction between these two statements, so there must be hidden assumptions behind this argument that
Would bring out the alleged contradiction. Here they are. If God is all-powerful, he can create any world he wants, and if God is all-loving, he prefers a world without suffering. So if an all-powerful, all-loving God exists, it follows that suffering does not exist. Since suffering
Obviously does exist, the atheist concludes that God must not exist. But are the atheist’s two hidden assumptions necessarily true? Consider the first assumption. Can God create any world he wants? What if he want a world populated by people who have free will? It’s logically impossible for God to force
Someone to freely choose to do good. Forcing free choices is like making a square circle; it’s not logically possible. It’s not that God lacks the power to perform the task; it is that the supposed task itself is just nonsense. So
It may not be feasible to create a world populated by people who always freely choose to do what is morally good, so the first assumption is not necessarily true. Therefore, the argument fails, and what about the second assumption? Is it necessarily true that God would prefer a world without suffering? How could we
Possibly know this? We all know of cases where we permit suffering in order to bring about a greater good. If it’s even possible that God allows suffering in order to achieve a greater good, then we cannot say this assumption is necessarily true. For the logical problem of suffering to succeed, the atheist
Would have to show that it’s logically impossible that free will exists, and that it’s logically impossible that God has good reasons for permitting suffering. This burden of proof is too heavy to bear. It’s quite possible that God and suffering both exist. This is why philosophers, even atheist philosophers,
Have given up on the logical problem of evil. We can concede that the problem of evil does not after all show that the central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another. Some philosophers have contended that the existence of evil is logically
Inconsistent with the existence of a theistic God. No one I think has succeeded in establishing such an extravagant claim. It’s now acknowledged on almost all sides that the logical argument is bankrupt. But this is hardly the end of the discussion. We still need to explore the probability version of the problem of evil.
I got this comment recently from someone i’m guessing he was in his 20s and he said why would god allow my six-year-old sister to die of horrible cancer and then he said and don’t tell me god’s just gonna make the best of it
He was being honest and he was devastated and angry but i could tell he still wanted to believe and it was causing conflict not an easy one to respond to and probably one of the hardest questions our faith is ever going to face
I think all of us are going to get to the point someday when we’re just going to look around and see all the war and disease and poverty and suffering and evil and we’re just gonna say where
Are you god how could you let these things happen or maybe how could you let this thing happen to me and we’re told over and over how this is some god of love who loves us like we’re his children and
He’s all good and all powerful and can do all things and we’ll just wonder then why doesn’t he do anything about it why doesn’t he intervene i wouldn’t let these things happen to my children
If i had the power to stop it and we’re left with this idea that if there is a god and that’s a very big if he’s either some cruel and sadistic god looking down on us like that mean child looks
Down on the worms roasting on the sidewalk or else he’s a weak god powerless impotent unable to do anything about it even if he chose or probably the worst one of all we think he’s just a cold and heartless god who really doesn’t care about you or me or anyone else
And for some of us we just lock this up and bury it down and keep jumping through our religious hoops even though deep beneath the surface it really bothers us and for others it makes us angry rebellious even hateful we’ll turn our backs
And walk away saying i don’t want anything to do with this god anyway either way faith is lost the truth is there really is no good answer to what we call the problem of evil simply because there is no answer it’s an unanswerable question sure i could
Illustrate out in very clever ways which all the greatest minds have said about it but they knew they were treading into deep waters far beyond our comprehension and you and i know that all the clever arguments in the world aren’t really going to cut it for that family who just
Buried their six-year-old or the woman brutalized or the millions starving to death every day even c.s lewis himself who crafted some of the most convincing arguments on the problem of evil when faced with the loss of the love of his life wrote it all seems like some kind of vile
Practical joke and when the need is desperate we go to god and find the door slammed in our face and the sound of bolting and double bolts from the inside and then silence i’m sure that probably
Connects somewhere with all of us but for me the only satisfactory answer i’ve ever heard on this question comes from god himself when asked by some poor soul in the bible who was really suffering
His name was job i’m sure you’ve heard of him and there was no other like him on the face of the earth faultless upright innocent and those are god’s words not mine and he had everything a
Loving family more wealth and prosperity than any other man in the east and the love and esteem of all his people and then one day he lost everything his family his children his loved ones dead his herdsmen his wealth his livelihood destroyed and he himself was struck with a disease so disgusting
That his friends could not even raise their eyes to him because they couldn’t even recognize him and he would just lay there in the ashes scraping himself with the broken shards of his life wondering why god my size have become my food he said my tears pour like flowing streams
I’m filled with restlessness until the dawn my flesh is clothed with worms and scabs my skin cracks and festers my days come to an end with no hope i shall never see happiness again and sure his friends came by with all the clever arguments in the world but they didn’t satisfy
Him and that conflict and rebellion grew inside him until finally lashed out at god and said how could you let this happen to me i’m innocent i did nothing wrong i did everything right explain yourself to me god’s response came through a storm who is this
Where were you when i laid the foundations of the earth tell me who determined its measurements surely you know have you commanded the morning since the days began have the gates of death been revealed to you do you have the wisdom to command the entire universe
And the power to operate it who is this who questions without knowledge he never answered the question he only answered with a series of unanswerable questions as if to say don’t worry i got this the man could only lay his hand over his mouth and learn to trust in the one who knows
And so will i evil is not some question to be answered or some riddle to be solved asking why only leads to it’s something to be overcome when jesus came down here and placed himself right in the midst of all our war and disease and suffering and evil what did he do
He didn’t just snap his fingers and make it all go away he didn’t yell and scream in anger and he certainly wasn’t afraid and god didn’t even spare his own son for me [Music] he could have instead he bore it literally all of it he suffered it patiently and he crushed it permanently
And he looks at you and me dead in the eyes and says come on now let’s do this together i’ll show you he doesn’t give us an answer he gives us himself there’s a scene from dostoyevsky’s book the brothers karmanov that’s etched in my brain in it is the grand inquisitor
Evil incarnate and he’s blaming his prisoner christ for all the evil in the world you got it wrong he accuses you gave them freedom but they’re too weak to bear the responsibility of it too weak to find salvation they don’t want freedom they want security
Without it there’d be no suffering no war no hunger no slavery no death because of you millions are lost because of you millions will suffer because of you millions will die the prisoner’s response and these are his lines not mine
When the inquisitor ceased speaking he waited some time for his prisoner to answer him his silence weighed down upon him he saw that the prisoner had listened intently all the time looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply
The old man longed for him to say something however bitter and terrible but he suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips that was all his answer the old man shuddered his lips moved he went to
The door opened it and said to him go come no more come not at all never never and he led him out into the dark alleys of the town what was christ’s response to evil no words no anger no fear just what was evil’s response
So i don’t think the question is why does god let bad things happen we can never know the answer to this but i’m perfectly okay trusting in the one who does but i think the better question is what’s my response how do i respond all the evil i see
Do i kick and scream cursing the darkness or do i go out there and light a candle a fire how do i respond to the evil that touches my friends my family my neighbor do i blame the entire universe or do i just show up and sit there gently and bear with them
How do i respond to the evil that invades my mind and tortures my soul do i fight to overcome the problem of evil where’s the problem of evil me terrible things are going to happen we can’t control that
But we can choose how we respond to it do i let it overcome me or do i overcome it do i respond just with more evil or my love in the midst of the evil is one of the hardest things we’ll ever do and i don’t think we can do it alone
But that’s okay because we have a very powerful friend who’s already gotten through exactly what it is you’re going through and he looks at you gently with all the love and strength in the universe and says okay come on now let’s do this together you
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!
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
The problem of evil is the most used and biggest objection to the existence of God there is not a skeptic out there who doesn’t cite the existence of evil as a reason God probably does not exist and So we need to be frank
This is a serious objection that Christians cannot simply overlook and There are no answers to the problem of evil that can explain every horrible event The reason why this is a persistent objection is because of the emotional sting that evil causes runs deep for mankind
Why does God allow so much pain and misery? Does God really love us if he can look down and see a child being tortured and not stop it any? One of us would if we came across such a horrible act Yet the omniscient God does nothing and simply lets evil continue unchecked why
I’ve spent years researching this in Adelaide a formal video on it because I wanted to take my time and give it a fair treatment Again, this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed But over the years of my research, I have come to the conclusion
The only way to address the problem of evil is not just through philosophy Although that is part of it because the problem of evil stings emotionally more than anything else. I’m Indebted to Clay Jones for this but one cannot truly address the problem of evil without the message of the gospel. I
Don’t think the problem of evil can be answered without Christianity and I’ll explain why later on But first we need to begin by going over what the problem of evil is and the different types of arguments I Would suspect the problem of evil has been used for millennia
But the logical problem of evil was famously given by the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and is what most people think of when they think of the problem of evil? Premise 1 if God is all good. Then he wants to stop evil premise 2 if God is all-powerful Then can stop evil
Premise 3 there is evil Conclusion. Therefore there is on an all-powerful and all good God However, this argument is not used by most modern atheistic philosophers because it ignored another important attribute of God his omniscience
Being that God is all-knowing. He might in his perfect knowledge have very good reasons for allowing evil that we cannot see Agnostic Paul Draper notes that some serious attempts have been given that show evil is logically compatible with God’s existence Specifically he says alvin plantinga’s free will defense has persuaded many
Planting a says of his free will defense a world containing creatures who are significantly free and freely perform more good than evil actions is More valuable all else being equal than a world containing no free creatures at all
Now God can create free creatures, but he can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right for If he does so then they aren’t significantly free after all They do not do what is right freely to create creatures capable of moral good therefore He must create creatures
Capable of moral evil and he can’t give these creatures of freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so as It turned out sadly enough some of the free creatures. God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom
And this is the source of moral evil the fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong However counts neither against God’s omnipotence nor against his goodness for he could have first Auld the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good
Paul Draper notes in order for a logical argument from evil to succeed It is necessary to show that for some known fact about evil It is logically impossible for God to have a good moral reason to permit that fact to obtain
This however is precisely what most philosophers nowadays believe cannot be shown and So the free will defense succeeds in showing it as at least logically possible For God to exist alongside evil Because it might be the case a world with freewill and evil is more
Valuable than a world with no free will and no evil and Thus William Roe has to admit there is a fairly compelling argument for the view that the existence of evil is logically consistent with the existence of a theistic God What most atheists argue today is the evidential problem of evil
Which today is where the real debate is because it is a probabilistic argument It argues that given the amount of evil in the world. It is unlikely an all-loving all-powerful God exists as Paul Draper says premise 1 gratuitous evil exists Premise 2 the hypothesis of indifference ie that if there are
Supernatural beings they are indifferent to gratuitous evils is a better explanation for 1 than theism Conclusion therefore evidence prefers that no God as commonly understood by theists exists Perhaps Sam Harris explains the issue of evil in a far more relatable way Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl
Soon he will rape torture and kill her If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment It will happen in a few hours or days at most the girl’s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is
Watching over them in their family. Are they right to believe this? is it good that they believe this know the entirety of atheism is contained in this response as You can see the issue many skeptics have is given the amount of horrendous evil in the world
How can an all-loving God allow this to happen, especially if he has the power to stop it? Surely it is far more likely there is no such God The issue itself has to be addressed by looking at what moral evil is it cannot be brushed over as mere hardship?
To put it bluntly as Lewis said the Christian answer that we have used our freewill to become very bad is so well known That it hardly needs to be stated But to bring this doctrine in the real life in the minds of modern men and even modern Christians is very hard
We need to really look at what evil is and I’m not going to hold any punches back or give a cheap account So viewer discretion is advised The reality is the atheists are right that our history is filled with insurmountable horrendous evil
The reality we all have to face his genocide is not inhumane despite that little lie. We’d like to tell ourselves Genocide is very much human When the Bible says humans are totally depraved is meant to be a very serious claim Matt Dillahunty and many others have argued
The Bible is an evil book that poisons our minds Telling us we are totally depraved is a horrible thing to say and degrades us as humans Well, that would only be true if the Bible was lying and we are not actually depraved
If I was suffering from narcissism and you told me I was a narcissist and needed to get psychiatric help That would only be a horrible thing to say if it was false If it was true that it might have been the best thing you could have told me
Because you would want to see me get help and overcome my mental disorder so if the Bible claims that we are totally depraved we ought to test that against reality and It will help us better understand. What moral evil is
What I’m about to go over will be a hard pill to swallow and it will take some time to unpack Because once we understand human nature, I suggest the problem of evil falls in the context
See, we like to think of ourselves as further along than our primitive ancestors who engaged in genocide rape and torture But there have been more people murdered in the past 120 years than any other time in our history The two world wars gave humanity an up-close look at some of the most brutal
Humans have ever committed against their fellow humans the Nazis rounded up Jews homosexuals gypsies the handicapped Polish Ukrainians and many other groups they deemed unworthy, they ripped children from their mothers and they murdered children in front of their parents. They
Made their victims walk in horrible death marches force them into sweltering rail cars and then made them travel for days without food or water People would defecate urinate and puke all over each other in these rail cars all to be taken the death camps where they were painfully exterminated with poisonous gas
Reports from guards talk of people in the chambers climbing over each other to try to claw their way out They knew everyone was dead when the screaming stopped The Nazis also performed Carew some experiments on young children where victims were put in a decompression chambers drained of blood or sewn together
The worst part was most of the young men who carried out these killings and tortures were average people from Germany drafted into the military We have identified over 10,000 camps ghettos and brothels the Nazis set up Many of the so called unfit were forcing the slave labor for Volkswagen BMW
Bayer and many other companies So it is not like the Germans did not know what was going on the German population knew early on Hillier wanted to exterminate those he saw his unfit and most did nothing when he started rounding people up and Worst of all many joined in and helped him
Was this inhumane this was completely human Of course it is sadly obvious to any student of history Japan was probably far worse than Germany the horrors They brought upon the Chinese people were thought to be unfathomable in a post enlightenment era the Japanese army raped tortured and murdered more than
300,000 Chinese and committed some of the most gruesome acts known to man People were lined up in decapitation contests civilians were tied down and used for bayonet practice Soldiers routinely would target women for gang rapes and torture and more often than not they targeted children
Many went beyond rape and disemboweled women slice off their breasts. They would hang men and women on hooks up by their tongues Fathers were forced to rape their own daughters at gunpoint people were buried alive castrated and roasted alive over fires It was so bad that Nazi leaders present and man king
Intervened to put a stop to it The Japanese army was so bad Nazis couldn’t even handle it Was this inhumane? This was completely human After the war when Russia marched into Berlin, they did many of the same things to German civilians
Starving women who came out of their homes to search for food were targeted for gang rape by Russian soldiers Fathers were forced to watch their daughters raped and tortured and were forced to pick which soldier got to go first in The USSR people were tortured and enslaved in concentration camps in Siberia
Populations like the Ukrainians were selected to be starved to death Parents were murdered in front of their children But then the children were left alive to starve to death as to not waste any bullets on them Was this inhumane? This was completely human
Okay, but surely these examples are extremes and the result of citizens being brainwashed by fascists and communists It would be wonderful if that was all this was But we see endless examples of these massacres throughout history in Rwanda in 1994 People were tortured and raped and over 800,000 were murdered
1.2 million Armenians were murdered by the Young Turks from 1915 to 1923 Roughly 2 million were murdered in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 in Guatemala Thousands of mine Indians were murdered the Reconciliation Commission of South Africa found that there were over 36,000 cases of abductions rape tortures and killings
I could go on and on talking about the genocide committed against saroja Muslims the rape epidemic in the Congo and Haiti Isis the Taliban Saddam Hussein’s Iraq the French military in Algeria the British Empire in
Tasmania in many other lands they conquered and even the slavery of Africans in the Western world and the genocide committed against Native Americans on every continent in every century genocide rape and war has been committed by humans because that is what humans do and I’ve only stuck with recent examples
Our history is filled with countless more examples and probably even more acts of genocide that were lost a time Humans are murderous selfish evil creatures and we have the audacity to call genocide inhumane I would bet the hundreds of species. We’ve directly caused to go extinct. Wish we were actually inhumane and
Let’s not pretend that we ourselves are somehow better than these other humans or that we would never commit such horrible acts Most of the people who ended up committing these terrible acts were terrifyingly normal They did it out of hate fear pride or just to be accepted by superiors
Holocaust survivor and professor Freddie Katz says only a tiny proportion of this century’s massive killings are Attributable to the actions of those people we call criminals or crazy people or socially alienated people Or even people we identify as evil people
The vast majority of killings were carried out by plain folk in the population ordinary people like you and me Cats reminds us he was ordinary people that carried out the plans of Hitler Stalin and Mao It was ordinary people that sat by and let it happen
Assuring themselves their own skins would be saved if they just followed orders It was ordinary people They let political divides Turned into vitriolic hatred for their opponents that eventually led them to think they must be killed first before they turn and kill us
We forget that there were actually many Jews that administered the ghettos or man, the gas chambers out of fear for their own survival even now in this country People who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum Or spoken of is not even human or need to be murdered for the greater good
It doesn’t take many more steps before we allow ourselves to slide into actions. We cannot take back people today are even talking as if a civil war is on the horizon and Yet we don’t think massacres could happen today
Given the history of our species I am highly skeptical things could not get out of control as they so often have in the past Psychologist Israel journey says Sometimes sitting in a staff meeting of a modern psychiatric hospital. I could see how it all could happen
The ingredients were all there the bitter hating factions among the staff disguising themselves in the pomp and circumstances of a mental health conference the barely disguised superiority and disdain for the hapless patient the patronizing professional sympathy in
Righteousness that barely concealed the brutality of the so-called modern therapies of electric shock in brain surgery The dehumanizing everyday hurting of anonymous patients into anonymous routines Everywhere in lovely families that persecuted one or more other members in the Universities
I loved where faculty intrigues and hatred knew no bounds in the Pampas coldness of exalted physicians Turning away from the death fears of their patients Almost every researcher that has looked in the genocide Concludes that genocide is carried out by the average person not by supervillains or dark Lords
Whether we want to lie to ourselves or not There is potential in us all to commit genocide and all sorts of other selfish evil acts Laying them Gilkey believed humans were naturally good until he was placed in an internment camp by the Japanese He said nothing indicates
So clearly the fixed belief in the innate goodness of humans as Does this confidence that when the chips are down and we are revealed for what we really are We will all be good to each other Nothing could be so totally an error
We forget that we have most of our needs met in the Western world That most people who have lived on this earth did not have access to We’ve not had to face the hardships of the past like tribal warfare with the kill-or-be-killed Mentality because we are blessed with such excess
So we are lucky our primal natures are not so evident If you had to fight for your survival under a brutal regime Or in an ancient setting you may very well be surprised at what you were capable of
The reality is our depraved nature is not something thrust upon us. It is very much a part of us and our ancestry The murder rate in prehistoric times was much higher than we expected When there was no law or fear of punishment
People often did what they had to do to survive or simply just did what they wanted in fact a recent paper suggested due to high murder rates the human population bottleneck roughly between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago with only one man for every 17 women
The idea modern societies have simply corrupted us is not backed by data Studies also back this up Stanley Milgram conducted the first Milgram experiments Where a subject would be brought in under the assumption that he was there to be one of two participants in a learning experiment
They were instructed to ask a person in another room a series of questions Unbeknownst, they were actually a paid actor if the other person answered wrong They would have to give them an electrical shock as ordered by the scientists Each shock would increase in the amount of pain it caused
The actor would cry from the other room They were having heart problems But the scientists performing the experiments would tell the subject he had to keep going regardless of the pain They were causing the person in the other room the results shockingly demonstrated that 65% of subjects in ministered all the shocks as
Instructed including one that was perpetrated to give a lethal shock Other researchers replicated these results with even higher percentages with subjects administering all the shocks in 1970 in West Germany 85% administered all shocks in 2017 in Poland 90% of participants also administered all the shocks
The data shows it is not hard for the average person to do horrible things Atheist Michael ruse says I think Christianity has spot-on about original sin how could one think otherwise when the world’s most civilized in advanced people the people of Beethoven Goethe can’t Embrace that slimeball Hitler and participated in the Holocaust
But surely there has to be some good people out there who do not deserve the lives they’ve been given Clay Jones asked a very simple question in his book do gang members stop at red lights Yes, but not because they respect that particular law it is out of self-interest
No one wants it gets sidelined by oncoming traffic Most people do not rob banks because they don’t want to go to jail Most people do not cheat on their spouse because they don’t want to destroy a marriage they may like ruin the reputation or lose relationships they derive meaning from
It’s hard to deny that much of what motivates us is self-interest when people do decide to go ahead with these terrible acts it is because they think they have clever ways out of them or Think the act will benefit them more than what they could lose
The sad reality is we are all motivated by our own self-interest in The light of human nature even acts of heroism and sacrifice can be motivated by self-interest Ernest Becker who openly rejects Christianity says Everything painful and sobering in what psychoanalytical genius and religious genius had discovered about a man
Revolves around the terror of admitting what one is doing to earn his self-esteem This is why human heroics is a blind driven as’ that burns people up in passionate people Screaming for glory as uncritical and reflexive as the howling of a dog in the more passive masses of mediocre
Men, it is disguised as they humbly and complainingly follow out the roles that society has provided for their heroics Man will lay down his life for his country his society his family He will choose to throw himself on a grenade to save his comrades. He is capable of the highest generosity and self-sacrifice
But he has to feel and believe that what he is doing is truly heroic timeless and supremely meaningful The hard truth no one wants to accept is there is no one good None are righteous. No one no one understands No one seeks for God all have turned aside together. They have become worthless
No one does good. Not even one There are many that wish to whitewash Jesus and just reduce them to a good moral teacher that offers some good advice and lessons But jesus never paints humanity as something inherently good that just needs a little guidance
But instead of sinners that desperately need to repent less we to perish if Christianity is true. It needs to answer for why bad things happen to people The answer we offer is this There are no good people for bad things to happen to da Carson says
First Jesus has not assumed that those who suffered under Pilate are those who were killed in the collapse of the tower? Did not deserve their fate Indeed the fact that he can tell those contemporaries that unless they repent
They too will perish shows that Jesus assumes that all death is in one way or another the result of sin and therefore deserved Second Jesus does insist that death by such means is no evidence whatsoever That those who suffer in this way are any more wicked than those who escape such a fate?
The assumption seems to be that all deserve to die if Some died under a barbarous governor and others in a tragic accident It is not more than they deserve but that does not mean that others deserve any less
Rather the implication is that it is only God’s and mercy that has kept them alive Third Jesus treats wars in natural disasters not as agenda items in a discussion of the Mysterious ways of God but as incentives to repentance
It as if he is saying that God uses disaster as a megaphone to call attention to our guilt and Destination to the imminence of his righteous judgment if he sees no repentance this is an argument developed at great length in Amos for
Disaster is a call to repentance Jesus might have added as he does elsewhere that peace and Tranquillity, which we do not deserve show us God’s goodness and forbearance it Is a mark of our lostness that we invert these two?
We think we deserve the times of blessing and prosperity and think that times of war in disaster are not only unfair become perilously close to calling into question God’s goodness or his power even Perhaps his very existence Jesus simply did not see it that way
Now I have hammered this point for quite a while because one of the worst lies we tell ourselves Is we really are good and do not deserve the world. We have created but nothing could be further from the truth God’s judgment our absence in rescuing us from this world seems barbaric
Only to the person that has not understood the depths of human psychology But if we can take some time to reflect on the state of humanity as seus Lewis puts it God’s wrath Seems to be inevitable a mere corollary from God’s goodness
Mere sloth wolf once questioned the wrath of God, but when he saw two hundred thousand people killed in Yugoslavia He said my people were shelled day in and day out Some of them brutalized beyond imagination and I cannot imagine God not being angry
Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God’s wrath I came to think I would have to rebel against the God who wasn’t wrathful at the site of the world’s evil God isn’t wrathful in spite of being loved God is wrathful because God is love
Now I need to be clear that Myself or any of the author’s I’ve quoted are not saying every horrible thing that happens to a person Should be seen as a direct punishment from God for their sin. No one is suggesting that
The point is simply to critique the notion that bad things happen to good people bad things happen to bad people and this is so because this is the world the human species chooses to live in every day as Our cease pearl once said why do bad things happen to good people?
Well, that only happened once and he volunteered The truth of the matter is no one has died before the age of accountability. That is not guilty Every person is invested in self interests and contributes to evil one way or another in
Light of all this the real question we should be asking is not why does a good God allow so much evil? But why does a good God not just wipe us out for the good of the universe? The answer to why there is so much evil is simple. There are so many humans
Every day we choose to contribute to the evil in the world by simply going about our day doing nothing and focusing on ourselves To put this into perspective with numbers the UN estimates that would cost roughly 30 billion a year to end world hunger in
Americans alone wasted 116 billion in gambling in 2016 God has already given us everything we need to turn this world into Eden and we simply delay it Whether you want to admit it or not every one of us contributes to the evil in the world
Mostly through focusing on ourselves and doing nothing to help We have everything we need to end things like world hunger and human trafficking and instead We spend our money on pointless things just to make ourselves happy Because if the problem is not right in our face we pretend it doesn’t exist
Simply put evil exists because we exist When this has been pointed out the next question is why did God create us this way? Why are we so easily prone to commit horrible acts?
Well, that is assuming God did make us evil one can argue he did not he made us free and to be truly free means We have to be allowed to choose how we want to be Seus Lewis says the moment you have a self at all
There is the possibility of putting yourself first wanting to be the center wanting to be God In fact, that was the sin of Satan and that was the sin. He talked to the human race it is not as if we were simply made to be this way as
A species we choose to be this way every day instead of focusing on good and holy things This is not how things were supposed to be Early on God called humans out of the wilderness to serve as priests over creation and to enter into a covenant with him
So that he could sanctify us to subdue the rest of creation in his name This is a story of Eden when Adam and Eve were called by God to be close to him in learn his ways But they rejected the Covenant God made with them and left his presence
So we could be our own gods in with that came the freedom to go as far into evil as we wanted to No matter how it would affect those around us god, they’re not dumas to a world of evil our species by rejecting Eden did so and without God’s protection and
Eden and the Tree of Life, we now live in a world of moral and natural evil Now many will object they were not in Eden. How can we be forced to live in a fallen world that we did not choose
Clay Jones response of this by saying that we did an individually vote to make Adam the head of our race Doesn’t matter because God knows who can best represent us Also, if God knew that all of us would have acted similarly. He does no wrong in choosing one person to represent us
If Christianity is true and the problem of evil needs to be addressed One cannot say this unfair Adam and Eve were our chosen representatives God in His omniscience knew who the best representatives would have been and therefore given human free Will there were no possible futures where humans did not choose sin?
So why even give us free will Should we really have been given the freedom to be truly evil? Why on earth would such a world not be better where we are deprived of free will So as to not cause grief pain and misery Clay Jones notes
It is not hard to perceive of such worlds and more often than not they are far worse than a world with free will we ought to consider how humanity has looked at this scenario and unsurprisingly a life without free will is
Often betrayed in movies as a horrible existence, and this should be pretty obvious Take the old movie from the 50s the invasion of the body snatchers The invaders do not want to kill off humanity But simply change humanity to lack free will and they offer it as a wonderful existence free of pain
Desire emotion ambition self-interest in such a world not only Terrifies us it becomes obvious that such a world would be worse than a world with free will and evil It would have been so much easier. If you’ve gone to sleep last night Oh relax, we’re here to help you
You know better than that Who you want us to put them would you like to watch them grow? No. Thanks. Put them in there There’s nothing to be afraid of we’re not gonna hurt you. But once you understand you’ll be grateful Remember how Teddy and I fought against it?
Well, we were wrong me and Teddy doesn’t mind of course not she feels exactly the way I do. Let’s go We’ll leave town. We won’t come back. We can’t let you go. You’re dangerous to us Don’t fight it miles. It’s no use Sooner or later you’ll have to go to sleep
I’ll wait for you in the hall Myles You and I are scientific men. You can understand the wonder of what’s happened I just think less than a month ago santomero was like any other town people with nothing but problems Then out of the sky came a solution
Seeds drifting through space for years took root in a farmer’s field From the seeds came pods, which have the power to reproduce themselves in the exact likeness of any form of life So that’s how it began, how does the sky
Your new bodies are growing in there they’re taking you over self or so atom forever There’s no pain Suddenly while you’re asleep, they’ll absorb your minds your memories and you’re reborn into an untroubled world Where everyone’s the same exactly What a world We’re not the last humans left. They’ll destroy you
Tomorrow you won’t want them to tomorrow you’ll be one of us I’m not Becky Tomorrow will I feel the same there’s no need for love no emotion And you have no feelings only the instinct to survive
You can’t love or be loved am I right you say it as if it were terrible believe me. It isn’t You’ve been in love before It didn’t last it never does Desire ambition faith without them life so simple, believe me. I
Don’t want any part you’re forgetting something miles. What’s that? You have no choice I guess we haven’t any choice good One to love and be loved I want your children. I don’t want a world without love grateful Buda rabbit are
The obvious reason as to why it is better to have free will and evil than the lack both is because we would simply lose our humanity our movies and books Celebrate realities we’re a world of free will along with pain and misery is a far better
Alternative to a world without these things a Good example can be seen in the movie, Pleasantville two teenagers are transferred into a scripted television show from the 1950s where everything is perfectly happy yet enslaved to a script they have to run through
However, the teens begin to introduce new passions and desires to the characters and throughout the movie All the characters reject are scripted enslavement for a life of freedom and color Even though that comes with passions emotions suffering in problems The message is clear the freedom to engage in love passions desires
Must come with real freedoms to do so Without free will these things are meaningless even though it comes with the bad as well an Existence of freedom along with misery and love is far better than scripted enslavement
The truth of the matter is given the option of a world with free will and pain versus a world without free will and pain Humans will always most likely choose a world with free will because as alvin plantinga says a world containing creatures who are significantly
Free and freely perform more good than evil actions It’s more valuable all else being equal than a world containing no free creatures at all So God simply could not have created humans without free will
We essentially would just be biological robots and that is not a world where we could truly experience love and companionship But with that has to come the true freedom to choose love or choose evil you cannot have your cake and eat it, too
If you want a world with true conscious agents who are free. You have to allow them to choose good without forcing them to Ask yourself this would you as a healthy adult want to spend a lifetime married to a lifeless?
Robot who always does what you command never speaks to you as a free agent or engages in an honest discussion The answer is no then you can understand why God chose a world where we are truly free and choose to love him or not
But surely there had to be another way couldn’t we have a world without the horrendous evil we currently have a World without a Holocaust or the Rwanda Massacre where we still have free will must surely be possible
Clay Jones debated Richard Norman on the radio show unbelievable and Jones, press Norman to answer this How could God give humans free will and not let them hurt others and the only answer he offered was I don’t know I’m not God, but it is possible
The key I guess back to my major point is that doesn’t just say it should have been a different world doesn’t tell us how Anywhere near how that world works. Well, I’m not to define creator I mean saying we’re talking about divine omnipotence in which any number of possible worlds could exist
Clay Jones, simply reply to that with if you can’t imagine a better way Then it’s at least logically possible that there isn’t a better way. I don’t know I’m not God as a cop-out We’ve harnessed the atom and put a man on the moon
If you’re going to complain that God should have done differently with regard to free will but you cannot offer a better way Then maybe there isn’t a better way Johnny There was no other way As we discuss in our video on omniscience Avengers infinity Wars provides an excellent analogy
Dr. Strange looked into the future and could only see one possible way to save the most number of people But that way involved a lot of pain and death given the free choices of evil creatures Likewise
Given God’s middle knowledge where he can only actualize a world that works with the free choices of creatures There are no possible worlds where God could create a world where we are free, and there is no evil or misfortune
God would actualize the world where there is the least amount of evil while taking human free choices into account Therefore the argument is given human freedom within middle knowledge God might not be able to actualize perfect worlds or worlds with less evil
Because there are no possible worlds where we are free and always do the right thing or do the right thing more often But couldn’t God just actively prevent more evil When the Nazis lined up the Jews to be shot
Why didn’t he just make the guns Jam or caused an earthquake to form a great chasm between them both? Such a world would not have freedom it would be a playpen with an overprotective mother Seus Lewis says we can perhaps conceive of a world in which God
Corrected the results of the abuse of free will by his creatures at every moment So that a wooden beam becomes soft as grass when it was used as a weapon in The air refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound waves that carry lies are insults
But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible in which therefore freedom of the will would be void Evil is not evil only an intention it needs to be carried out and experienced Otherwise we are not truly free to do what we want
We would be nothing more than constrained robots locked in with predetermined boundaries This would be a sci-fi horror Where we know there is something holding us back and can’t freely reject it We can see from sci-fi shows being free up to a certain point is not freedom. It’s slavery System
God wants actual free creatures to do the good But the only way he can truly have free creatures that will do the good is allow us to see the devastating consequences that rebellion causes Babying us is not freedom nor would we ever grow and learn to freely choose to reject evil?
We have to experience it for ourselves and hopefully learn from it It’s a dictator who says be free, but you’ll suffer if you use your freedom in this kind of way. Yeah
Thank you for that Richard. I agree. Yeah be free. But if you use your free will wrongly you’re really gonna hurt each other It’s gonna be bad. Yes exactly. What is problem with your position precisely precisely that you make God sound like
Some kind of dictator that’s just a problem with your position outlet a dictator that says do what you want. And here we are Yeah, we do what you want and you will suffer for it. Well, do what you want and look what you’ll do
You’ll do outwits to each other you’ll do you’ll be the Khmer Rouge. You’ll be Rwanda This is what happens when free wit beans go off and decide they’re gonna do whatever they want
And so to say he’s a dictator that says to his people. Okay. You don’t want to follow my rules knock yourselves out if he But couldn’t God teach us another way given the self-centered nature of humanity I ask how
Some have suggested God ought to provide dreams to warn people, but that is assuming we would even listen Growing up. My parents warned me not to do a number of stupid things I did them anyway, as we all did when we were kids
There’s been a Surgeon General warning on cigarette packets for decades people still smoke Recent history alone is filled with examples of large corporations who had evidence their products were harmful and they did nothing God performed dozens of miracles before Israel in the desert and they still hardened their hearts and complained
So perhaps if God was more involved nothing would change Real life is not an episode of touched by an angel We’re glowing being can show up tell us to change and we live happily ever after people have to be shown how evil they are and what their actions cause if
Everyone could just be told to change things would have gotten a lot better thousands of years ago This is a hard truth humanity has to learn and it cannot be done by God simply Babying us and providing knee pads for every corner in
Fact if God did simply that and gave us everything needed to keep us perfectly happy Arguably it could make things worse Keith Ward says I could give people lots of good things and they will like me because of what I give them
But will they love me freely for myself? Well, they love me unselfishly Hardly, in fact such a course of action may be self-defeating. I Cannot make people unselfish by giving them lots of things they want and so encouraging selfish tendencies
We have to remember the chief goal of God is not to make us happy but to make us holy through sanctification which will make us truly happy in the long run as we discussed in our videos on the nature of Heaven and Hell and
Given the self-centered nature of humanity that God would want us to overcome Having us live in a fallen world will help us to realize we need to return to God and to be sanctified William Lane, Craig and JP Moreland, put it like this
Innocent human suffering provides an occasion for deeper dependency and trust in God if We are depraved as the evidence shows keeping humanity happy and safe will not fix what is actually wrong with us History seems to show that hardships caused more people to turn to God
Patrick Johnstone has noted in his work that Christianity tends to grow more in countries that have faced severe hardship Under communist rule in China Christianity was and still is to some degree heavily persecuted Yet despite that it is set to become the world’s largest Christian nation by 2030
Although I do not argue God is the cause of misery and suffering allowing us to live in a fallen world that we choose can be used by God to bring us back to him and Ultimately help sanctify us into eternity where our present pain will be dwarfed in comparison to the joy
We will experience there but God doesn’t always have to prevent evil. Why not just a little more why do children have to die of cancer? Couldn’t the Holocaust have been cut in half if God had simply warned the Jews in a dream to get out of Germany before Hitler Became Chancellor in
Response clay Jones says First who is to say, how much is too much? For instance skeptics often cite the Holocaust as an example I ask those who say God shouldn’t have allowed so much evil whether they would be Satisfied if instead of six million Jews killed only 600,000 had been killed
No one ever says yes six thousand. Nope 600. Nope, six Should everyone be allowed to live to a certain age before they die? should certain diseases only effect really bad people at what point is the line drawn between security and freedom a
Reality where we are free and have rejected God’s lordship has to have real consequences and be fully realized for what it is When people suggest this what they are really saying is I want to be God and the Creator needs to be our magical Butler
Who watches over us never lets anything really bad happen, but still lets us rebel so that we can do what we want if That was the case. We would never truly see the real consequences that our rebellion has caused
Instead we would have God as our servant who was supposed to take care of us when it is needed But doesn’t really let the horrendous consequences of what happened when we abandoned him to play out in the natural world without his presence
Unless we see what the evil in our hearts truly does. We will never learn God’s message is simply that your rebellion must be fully realized so that hopefully you will come back Summary so far Evil exists because humans had the freedom to choose god, but instead we chose to be our own gods
When we walked away from God in Eden, we chose a different Lord for the earth And with that a world filled with issues that a connection to God and the Tree of Life would have prevented
Although God could regularly intervene. He doesn’t because he wants our species to see the real consequences of our rebellion which is life without his presence and sanctification as horrible as it is is the only way to learn the horrors of what life without God is like
Natural laws have to work in a regular way if our actions are to mean anything at all But that is not the whole story the Skeptic who makes the argument from the problem of evil often will subtly
Presuppose a non theistic worldview, they will mention a young child who died before his or her time from a horrible disease but if the argument is to attack a Christian worldview The whole of that worldview has to be taken into consideration And more often than not we forget that when that child dies
They do not rot in the grave forever But can live on an eternity in the pain and this life will be dwarfed in comparison to the joy. We will feel the next the previous two videos I made went over heaven and hell and explain what they are and how no one in Hell
Doesn’t want to be there so It’s important to remember that God has not doomed us to a world of misery in one life or an eternity of misery in hell Those who die can go on forever in a world of endless love if they choose to and the joy
We will experience in heaven will dwarf the misery. We feel here So the child dying of a horrible disease is not forgotten but given new life in the age to come Although God lets us experience. What a world that has rejected him feels like He still rescues all who want to be rescued
The worst pains of this life will be as miniscule in the next as the pains of when you fell down as a toddler Are to you now as an adult So you can’t compare the evils we feel now on a Christian worldview without accounting for eternity
God has promised a way back to Eden for all those who want it as seus Lewis said They say of some temporal suffering No future bliss can make up for it not knowing that heaven once attained will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory and
God did not sit idly by He didn’t just make a way back to Eden. He came to us in our pain and misery to pull us out There are a lot of gods that are for joy for our misery
But sit distantly away never experiencing as we experience never suffering human pain as we suffer Not with this God There is only one God that plunged himself into pain to save us You want to know the answer to a world filled with torture and murder?
It is a God who was tortured and murdered to wipe away every tear in sadness While we were his enemies Christ died for us if Evil was meaningless or a cruel joke and omnipotent God plays on us then. Why did the omnipotent God empty himself?
Become a lowly servant to suffer as we suffer and die as we die even the Atheist philosopher Albert Camus admitted Christ the man God suffers too with patience Evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies
Then I don’t go Gotha is so important in the history of man only because in its shadow the divinity Abandon is traditional privileged and drank its last drop despair included the agony of death Even if you cannot find a reason for your suffering and have nothing I said thus far suffices in Christ
The reason can’t be because he doesn’t love us at The cross a coin was flipped on one side justice and the other side mercy And it was the only time in history the coin landed on its edge God allowed justice to fall on self so that mercy might fall on us
The Gospels thus tell the story which is unique in the world’s great literature religious theories or philosophies the story of the Creator God taking responsibility for what’s happened to creation bearing the weight of his problems on his own shoulders a
Sydney Carta most famous for writing the lord of the dance put it in one of to my mind his finest songs It’s God they ought to crucify Instead of you and me I said to the carpenter a hanging on the tree
Or as one old evangelistic tract put it the nations of the world got together To pronounce sentence on God for all the evils in the world Only to realize with a shock that God had already served his sentence the tidal wave Of evil had crashed over the head of God himself
The terrorist spear went into his side like a plane crashing into a great building God has been there. He has taken the weight of the world’s evil on his own shoulders You cannot look at the problem of evil while ignoring the cross
God took evil upon himself so that a new creation could begin in his resurrection If evil was the fault of God, he has already carried out his sentence as st Augustine said God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering if
Evil is a problem. The problem is also felt by God the cry of Jesus – Paul says it all Saul why are you persecuting me? Notice Jesus did not say why are you persecuting my people? He said why are you persecuting me?
Jesus places himself in the midst of evil and suffering with us if Evil was too much to bear for any creature. God would never have created in the first place But God still did create knowing full
Well, he would take the brunt of it because the love of creation was worth more than all the pain he feels through us Evil exists for now because of us, but even in that God took the pain and misery of us all
Faithfully to the car and in the end he will wipe away every tear
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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