The Problem Of Evil - Philosophy Flashcards
Natural Evil
Evil that results from the workings of the natural world e.g Natural disasters and disease
God designed and created the natural world, making Him seem responsible for the evil and suffering that occurs in nature
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This is a problem for God’s existence because God could have designed a world without natural evil
Moral evil
Evil caused by human action, such as murder or rape
There are infamous examples throughout history of evil actions on a mass scale, such as the holocaust
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This is a problem for God’s existence because why doesn’t God intervene to prevent these things
The Logical Problem of Evil - Epicurus
This is an apriori argument that evil and the God of classical theism cannot exist together
Epicurus was an Ancient Greek philosopher and was the first to formulate this problem
1) Is God willing but not able to prevent evil? Then he isn’t omnipotent
2) Is God is able to prevent evil but not willing? Then he isn’t omnibenevolent
3) If God is both able and willing, then why is there evil?
4) If God is neither able or willing then why call him God?
Logical Problem of Evil - Inconsistent Triad (Mackie)
All three Omni qualities cannot exist with evil also existing and so God doesn’t exist
P1. An omnipotent God has the power to eliminate evil.
P2. An omnibenevolent God has the motivation to eliminate evil.
P3. Nothing can exist if there is a being with the power and motivation to eliminate it.
C1. Evil, omnipotence and omnibenevolence thus form an inconsistent triad such that God (as classically defined) and evil cannot possibly co-exist.
SOMETIMES DEVELOPED TO BE APOSTERIORI
P4. Evil exists because we experience it in the world
C2. Therefore God does not exist
Evidential Problem of Evil - Hume
Aposteriori - doesn’t try to claim that evil logically disproves God but rather sees it as evidence against His existence
Aposteriori suffering that Hume points out:
1 – Animal suffering. Why shouldn’t nature be created such that animals feel less pain, or indeed no pain at all?
2 – Creatures have limited abilities to ensure their survival and happiness
3 – Why does nature have extremes which make survival and happiness more difficult? Natural evil
4 – Why doesn’t God intervene to prevent individual natural disasters?
Hume says it’s possible that a perfect God allows evil, but there reasons ‘are unknown to us’ - he argues that whatever speculations theologians like Augustine and Irenaeus might invent about God’s reasons for allowing evil, we have no evidence that He has such reasons
Summary of Evidential Problem of Evil
P1. We are only justified in believing what the evidence suggests (empiricism).
P2. We only have evidence of imperfection (a world with both good and evil).
C1. We are only justified in believing that imperfection exists.
C2. So, belief in a perfectly good being is not justified.
A defender of God against this argument must not show only a logically possible reason for God’s allowance of evil, but they must show there is good evidence for thinking that it’s not merely possible but actually true
Original Sin (Augustine)
The first sin that Adam and Eve committed resulted in a corruption in humanity, spread through the loins of Adam (as we were all ‘seminally present in the loins of Adam’)
Thus, all humanity is corrupted forever
How does Augustine see Evil
Not a property itself, but rather a ‘privation of good’ - as humans fell away from God (The Fall), we fell away from his goodness, resulting in what we mistakenly call ‘evil’
Evil has no ‘positive existence’, similar to darkness, where it is an absence of a thing rather than a thing by itself
Free Will Defence - Plantinga
Intended to respond to Mackie:
He argues that it is possible for God and evil to coexist because evil is the result of free will
Moral evil results from human actions and Plantinga says it’s logically possible for natural evil to result from:
1) The free will of Demons and Satan
2) The free will of Adam and Eve justifying God in allowing natural evil into the world as punishment
Plantinga claims that free will gives life and the universe value, and so we must accept that our universe is better for having value (free will) despite the downsides (evil)
Summary of the Free Will Defence
P1. Evil is the result of the misuse of free will.
P2. God cannot remove evil without removing free will (that would be logically impossible).
P3. Life would be valueless without free will, so it is better to have free will despite the evil its misuse can lead to.
C1. It is therefore better for evil to exist than not to.
C2. An omnibenevolent and omnipotent God therefore would allow evil.
So, a perfect God would allow evil
Strength of Augustine’s theodicy against the Logical Problem of Evil
It does seem logically possible that God allows evil because it is either sin (moral) or punishment for sin (natural) or the work of satanice energies (natural)
Also, Augustine doesn’t argue we are responsible for Adam and Eve’s actions but rather that a factual consequence of Adam’s sin was that all future humanity became infected with original sin and thus deserve punishment
we deserve punishment for being sinful beings
Weakness of Augustine’s theodicy
Pelagian Controversy -
Followers of Pelagius objected that Adam’s crime is not a personal crime of his descendants - thus it remains incompatible with omnibenevolence to suggest we deserve punishment
Example:
It’s difficult to maintain that a child deserves cancer (natural evil as a punishment) because it has original sin. Augustine would have to say it is God’s justice for that child to get cancer and God is still omnibenevolent despite allowing it - seems logically inconsistent
Evaluation defending Augustine’s theodicy
It may seem unfair, but Augustine puts it down to the ‘secret yet just judgement of God’, indicating the epistemic distance but declaring that we should have faith that justice is served
Augustine points to Psalm 25:10: ‘All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth’ and concludes: ‘Neither can his grace be unjust, nor his justice cruel’
Furthermore, children suffering from natural evil could be as a result of the work of demons
Evaluation criticising Augustine’s theodicy
The case of innocent children suffering natural evil destroys Augustine’s argument - he can maintain that adults deserve natural evil; he still thinks giving in to original sin (i.e concupiscence) is a choice
However he cannot argue this about small children, too young to choose to sin - there is no logically coherent way to claim that small children deserve to suffer
A strength of Augustine’s original sin from empirical evidence
G.K. Chesterton made the point that you can see evidence for original sin ‘in the street’.
R. Niebuhr said original sin was the one ‘empirically verifiable’ Christian doctrine
When Augustine was 16, he and his friends stole some pears. What Augustine found remarkable was that upon reflection, he realised he did not steal them because he was hungry (threw them away) - he concluded he did it just for the pleasure of sinning
Scientific evidence against Augustine’s problem of evil
Geneticists claim that the evidence we have of genetic diversity means that it’s not possible for all of humanity to have descended from two people - this, in addition to other evidence for evolution, suggests we evolved and were not created
Augustine wrongly thought that reproduction worked by there being little people inside men (Homunculus theory), so when Adam sinned all future humanity became infected by it
The story of Adam and Eve is unscientific - the notion that we inherited a corrupt nature and guilt from Adam seems to be unscientific nonsense
Evaluation defending Original sin from science
Augustine could still be correct about human nature’s corruption by original sin, even if he’s wrong about the Fall being the exact means by which that came to be
Augustine would ask that if your city was under siege, would you go out on the street and try to help others, or would you hunker down with your family and try defend what you have? - This inclination towards self-love and away from the love of your neighbour that characterises original sin
The Stanford prison experiment supports human corruption and corruptibility (but they were influenced by society)
It’s common knowledge that power corrupts people - when people gain the opportunity to sin and get away with it, they are more likely to do so
Evaluation criticising Original sin from science
Pelagius said how Augustine’s observations reflect his society, not human nature -‘educated in evil’
MLK ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice’ - humans have arguably progressed since Augustine
Steven Pinkerton attributes to the power of human reason that violence has decreased, even considering the 20th century
The average human life seems more secure than at any prior point in history - if Augustine was correct that original sin caused an irresistible temptation to sin, then human behaviour could not improve; it has
So, OG sin doesn’t exist and can’t be used to justify or explain evil
The Irenaean Theodicy
Irenaeus saw the Fall as a necessary stage in human development towards perfection - Adam and Eve are like children who go astray because they lack sufficient wisdom to do what is right - punishment is a way to help children mature
Creation has 2 steps for Irenaeus
1) Being made in his image (‘God made humans in his image’), where we have only a potential for good due to spiritual immaturity
2) Where we achieve God’s likeness (‘God made humans in his… likeness’) by choosing good over evil, enabling us to grow spiritually and morally. The idea is that encountering and overcoming evil makes us become more virtuous
Irenaeus pointed to the Bible story of Jonah and the Whale:
Jonah disobeyed God and then the natural evil of a storm and a whale, who ate him and spat him out days later, helped Jonah learn his lesson and he then obeyed God. Evil thus serves the good purpose of motivating us to be good.
Hick’s modern Irenaen Theodicy: stages
Argued humans not created perfect but develop in two stages
Stage 1: Spiritually immature: through struggle to survive and evolve, humans can develop into spiritually mature beings. The Fall is a result of immature humans who are only in the image of God
Stage 2: Grow into a relationship with God
What does Hick argue for
Epistemic distance
Hick argues that only if we have faith in God and still do good because we want to do good, rather than because we know for sure there’s a God who wants us to, can we truly grow spiritually and morally
Peter Vardy’s illustration of epistemic distance allowing us to truly grow spiritually and morally
A king sees a beautiful peasant girl whom he wishes to woo. He cannot approach her in his kingly guise, for it would be a false love borne of fear and obedience; he must approach disguised to foster true feelings of
This is similar to God, if we knew he was real we would not be truly moral as we would be following his authority rather than really loving and doing good of our own volition
Strength of soul making vs the evidential problem of evil
There’s evidence that encountering and overcoming evil develops a person’s character and virtue, which is behind the idea of character development in literature. Also behind those who grow up spoiled.
By going through harsh struggles, a person becomes stronger and gains compassion for others, which is seemingly a factual occurrence
E.g cancer patients gain a whole new lease on life and go about doing all the things they had always wanted to do
‘What does not kill me, makes me stronger’ ~ Nietzsche
Weakness of soul making vs the evidential problem
The distribution of evil we observe is not aligned with the soul-making requirements of those who suffer from it
Some evil is dysteleological and has no chance of leading to spiritual development e.g a child who dies of cancer are too young to understand what is happening, let alone learn anything from it
Animal suffering is dysteleological - William Rowe gave the example of a fawn dying in a forest fire, there is evidence for it but no one would gain sympathy or compassion from it
Some evil is soul breaking and has no positive impacts that Iranaeus and Hick claim e.g the holocaust
D.Z. Phillips questioned whether anyone in their ‘right mind’ could say the holocaust was justified because a few survivors were strengthened by it
How does Hick’s theodicy escape Phillips and the dysteological evil point
They commit strawman fallacy
Hick isn’t arguing the holocaust is justified by soul making - it is that an imperfect world and free will which could perpetrate the holocaust is required for soul making
If all natural and moral evil observed was perfectly calibrated to soul making requirements of those who suffered from it then a perfect natural world and God’s intervention every time free will was misused would transpire.
This would remove epistemic distance and we would only behave morally out of self interest and be unable to develop virtue
Evaluation critiquing Hick from the evidential problem of evil
By definition, there can be no evidence for epistemic distance and it’s merely a logical possibility and as such can never be used against the evidential problem
Hick’s functioning defence is that the logic of his theory means we shouldn’t expect to find evidence of his theory. That may be true, but the issue follows that we have no evidential basis on which to justify belief in God
The evidential problem remains
A strength of soul-making vs the logical problem
Its premise that creating us fully developed was logically impossible; a fully developed soul is one which has chosen good over evil, which requires us to make a choice
Hence, it’s logically impossible for God to create us full developed. Most theologians agree omnipotence doesn’t include the power to do the logically impossible
So, a perfect God would create us undeveloped and allow us to choose good over evil in freedom. Evil is needed because it serves this good purpose of soul-making.
So, evil isn’t incompatible with God’s existence and Mackie’s logical problem seems defeated
Weakness of soul-making against the logical problem
Hick fails to explain why a morally good God would’ve created us at all
David Benatar is an anti-natalist philosopher, meaning he argues that creating sentient beings who will suffer is wrong
Creating beings that will suffer cannot be justified by pointing to benefits of that suffering. This is because if we never existed, those benefits wouldn’t be need
A morally good God would not create beings whose development required evil and suffering. It would be better for those beings to have never existed
Evaluation defend Hick from the logical problem
Hick survives these questions about God’s decision to create us because he takes caer to combine his theory with the proposal that no one ever goes to hell and that we have potentially unlimited attempts to become virtuous in an afterlife
So humans eventually receive an eternal good which clearly makes suffering worth it
A perfect God thus would create humans in a world mixed with good and evil because it serves that ultimately good purpose
Evaluation critiquing Hick from logical problem
Benatar’s logic undermines Hick’s argument. Only once we exist does suffering become justified for our development - if we never existed, we wouldn’t need to go through this painful process at all.
It would be better for us had we never it existed because it would be good that we didn’t suffer and we couldn’t miss the salvation
So, the suffering attendant on soul-making is ultimately unnecessary and an omnibenevolent God could never be motivated to bring us or it into being
So the problem remains
Strength of soul making with omnibenevolence
Evil is serving some good purpose which seems the best way to make it compatible with omnibenevolence
Hick did this intentionally, entitling his book, ‘Evil and the God of love’.
Other theodicies are less persuasive because they try to either blame humanity for the actions of their ancestors or even take away God’s omnipotence
Weakness from Dostoyevsky
‘If everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it?’ - Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan
People get into heaven on the back of the suffering of innocent children; no good person or God would design this connection into heaven
Claiming that the process of soul making is not morally acceptable - if the suffering of a child was the cost of the soul making of others, ‘Ivan’s’ point is that this is indecent
Building heaven on a foundation of children suffering is not what Hick’s supposed ‘God of love’ would accept
Judgement defending Hick from Dostoyevsky
In Dostoyevsky’s book, the response given to Ivan (reflecting his own response?) is that earthly suffering will ‘pass away in eternity’
William Lane Craig makes a similar argument, claiming that children who suffer go straight to heaven
Heaven is infinite. It is worth suffering from evil to get there
Judgement critiquing Hick from Dostoyevsky
Hick doesn’t say that every case of evil has a soul-making benefit, but that the possibility of soul making requires a world in which evil, even dysteological, is possible
Ivan’s point is that this is not a morally acceptable system and that his own moral virtue compels him to reject it
Ivan’s discomfort is logical as it doesn’t seem right to accept heaven for himself if the price is the suffering of innocent children
Weakness that libertarian free will doesn’t exist
Ayer argues our choices are either determined or not: random. If determined, they result from prior causes such as our character, which is itself determined by prior causes. In either case, we couldn’t have done otherwise
Mackie develops this, saying our actions are either the result of randomness, external causes, or our own character; it is those choices which originate from our character that we typically call moral
But we did not create our character - Mackie concludes the only coherent definition of free will is a compatibility one where ‘free choice’ is when our actions are determined by our character
This then allows Mackie to argue that if there was a perfect God, he would have given us all a morally good character
This argument attacks the logical coherence of libertarian free will and thus defends the logical problem of evil
Application of Mackie’s attack on Libertarian Free Will to theodicies
- Adam and Eve would have never disobeyed God. Augustine and Plantinga therefore lose their explanation of natural evil
- All humans would behave morally now, so Augustine and Plantinga lose their explanation of moral evil
- Hick loses his explanation of why God couldn’t have created us fully or at least better formed than he did
Evaluation defending theodicy from free will critique
Plantinga responded with his first morally sufficient reason: that it is not logically possible for God to create a world where free agents always make good choices
The possibility of a world of free creatures choosing only good depends on their free choices, which God can’t control without removing free will
Hence, whilst a world where free creatures only choose good is technically possible, it doesn’t mean God can bring it about since its existence depends on particular free choices being made which God cannot cause without removing free will
This response from Plantinga presuppose Libertarian Free Will
Kant’s support for Plantinga
He argued humans are ultimately non-physical souls which exist outside of the realm of cause and effect, so we can have free will despite the physical world being predetermined.
It is logically possible that we have souls, so the logical problem of evil is defeated
Evaluation critiquing from free will issue
Plantinga tries to respond God couldn’t have created us in a way we do only good actions, since then we wouldn’t have ,made a choice
This response fails to consider Mackie’s argument for compatibilism; the notion of libertarian free will which Plantinga presupposes is logically incoherent
Free choice involves doing what is in our character to do, but we didn’t choose our character - we couldn’t have as we didn’t exist before it
We didn’t make our soul either, so if our character comes from our soul in some way we didn’t create it
God thus could’ve given us all a good character, which would’ve prevented Adam and Eve from causing the fall and make soul making unnecessary
Free will cannot be appealed to when defending God’s existence in the face of evil
