³1username³2LarrySanger³2name³2text_default³2version³21³2ts³2981080868³2ip³224.234.246.58³2data³2newauthor³31³3minor³30³3text³3I am going to finish up with the so-called <i>argument</i> <i>from</i> <i>evil</i>, which has, as its conclusion, "God does not exist."  This is also called the <i>problem</i> <i>of</i> <i>evil</i>.  I want to remind you that, just because I am presenting this argument, that does not mean that I think it is a good argument, or that I agree with its conclusion.  I just want you to understand what the argument is, and then you can go and think whatever you like about it.

Now, we have talked about the rationality of <i>theism</i> -- about whether arguments are needed in order to be rational in believing in God, for example.  But we could just as well talk about the rationality of <i>atheism</i>.  If you are an atheist, you would appear to need some arguments <i>that</i> <i>God</i> <i>does</i> <i>not</i> <i>exist</i>.  It would not do simply to refute arguments that God exists.  That would only show that there was no good reason to believe that God exists.  It would <i>not</i> show that there was good reason specifically to believe that God <i>does</i> <i>not</i> exist.  Christians see this and sometimes say: you can’t prove that God <i>does</i> <i>not</i> exist, because you can’t prove a negative; so atheism requires just as much faith as theism does; so at least you should be <i>agnostic</i>.

But some atheistic philosophers insist that one <i>can</i> prove that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist.  You <i>can</i> prove a negative, they say: you <i>can</i> prove that something does not exist.  How?  You show that the very concept of a thing is contrary to known facts.  That’s how the argument from evil goes.  Very briefly, the argument from evil proceeds like this: if God did exist, then he would eliminate evil from the world; but we see evil all around us; therefore, God does not exist.  I am sure you have thought of this problem before.  Now let’s see if we can state it more rigorously, and what objections might be made against it.

Here is the argument, in a more detailed form:

1. If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving.

2. If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it.

3. If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient.

4. If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent.

5. If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving.

6. Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving.

7. But evil does exist in the world.

8. Thus (by premise 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving.

9. Therefore (by premises 1 and 8), God does not exist.  (That is, the God of Judeo-Christian religion, which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving, does not exist.)

Now let’s go back over the premises and see which ones we might criticize.  Remember that if you want to criticize an argument, then either you attack the premises, or you show that the premises do not entail the conclusion.  Now, the way I have formulated the argument from evil, the premises <i>do</i> entail the conclusion: this is a deductively valid argument.  That means that <i>if</i> the premises are all true, <i>then</i> the conclusion must be true.  But that’s not too impressive.  If I had wanted to, I <i>could</i> have formulated the ontological argument and the cosmological arguments as deductively valid arguments; I would then, if I wanted to criticize those arguments, simply attack the premises.  So if you are certain that the conclusion of a valid argument is wrong, one of the premises must be wrong.  You just have to say which one, and say <i>why</i> that one is wrong.

So that’s what we’re going to do here.  We’ll go over the different premises and see whether they can stand up to scrutiny.  Premise (1) just states some basic facts about the Judeo-Christian conception of God: "If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving."  Ordinary Christians certainly do not want to reject premise (1).  Other people might end up rejecting this premise, because they want to believe in a <i>different</i> sort of God.

How about premise (2)?  "If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it."  Why think this?  Well, evil has to have <i>some</i> explanation.  Why would a good God allow evil to exist in the world?  Maybe he doesn’t know about it; or maybe he <i>can’t</i> get rid of it; or maybe he doesn’t <i>want</i> to eliminate it.  But is there any <i>other</i> explanation?  Perhaps, but I don’t think so.  Just ask yourself this: suppose God <i>knew</i> about evil, he <i>could</i> eliminate all of it, and he <i>wanted</i> to eliminate all of it; could evil even <i>possibly</i> exist then?  Surely not.  If God <i>knew</i> about all the evil, and he <i>could</i> get rid of it, and he <i>desired</i> to get rid of it, then God <i>would</i> get rid of it.  But then we simply say: suppose that evil <i>does</i> exist.  In that case, either God doesn’t know about it, he can’t get rid of it, or he doesn’t want to get rid of it.  One of those options is open to us (or perhaps a combination of them).  That’s what premise (2) says.  So I don’t think we can criticize premise (2).

Now look at premise (3).  "If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient."  That seems perfectly true.  If there’s <i>anything</i> that God doesn’t know, then God isn’t omniscient; what it means to be omniscient is to know everything that there is to know.

Similar things can be said about premise (4).  "If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent."  That also seems incontrovertibly true.  If there is anything that God can’t do, anything that doesn’t involve a contradiction anyway, then God isn’t omnipotent.  What it means to be omnipotent is to be able to do everything.  If God were omnipotent then he could certainly eliminate evil.  So I think both premises (3) and (4) have to be accepted.

But now what about premise (5)?  "If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving."  This one is more doubtful.  In fact I am sure that a lot of you will want to raise objections to it.  Isn’t it at least <i>possible</i> that God is all-loving, but he still doesn’t want to eliminate evil?  Maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  Well, we’ll elaborate on this objection in a bit.  Just keep in mind that we are going to come back to it; so premise (5) is the first premise we’ve found which is really dubious.

Next consider premise (6).  "Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving."  This follows deductively from premises (2)-(5); the only way to reject premise (6) is to reject (2), (3), (4), or (5); and so if we end up deny premise (5), that will be enough to allow us to say that (6) is false.

What about premise (7)?  "But evil does exist in the world."  Some people deny this.  But how?  How could anyone possibly deny that evil exists in the world?

Some people say that evil is <i>merely</i> an <i>appearance</i>; it is <i>only</i> an illusion.  Nothing is <i>really</i> evil.  I suppose the idea is that if you get yourself into the right frame of mind, probably a rather fuzzy frame of mind, then evil seems powerless and inconsequential.  What really matters is goodness, happiness, love, or something like that; so evil doesn’t matter, and in a sense it doesn’t really exist.

I have to admit that I have a hard time taking that view seriously.  First of all, even if evil "doesn’t matter," that certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t <i>exist</i>.  Because plainly it <i>does</i> exist.  Hitler exterminated six million Jews; that wasn’t evil?  People suffer from debilitating diseases all around the world; that’s not an evil we all potentially face?  People are regularly killed by tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.  Those events aren’t really evil?  Their obvious hatefulness is illusory?  That seems ridiculous.  Unless you have some sophisticated way to explain <i>why</i> evil is merely illusory, this view can be safely rejected.  I seriously doubt you can solve the problem of evil by simply <i>denying</i> that evil exists.

Premise (8) reads: "Thus (by premises 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving."  This is a further inference from earlier premises, so the only way that we can reject <i>it</i> is by rejecting those earlier premises.

So after going over each premise of the argument from evil, we have found just <i>one</i> premise, namely (5), that gives us substantial hope of escaping the conclusion.  As I said, maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  But how?  How could a God that is all-loving allow evil not only to exist, but to <i>flourish</i> in the world?  That is the project of giving a <i>theodicy</i>.  A theodicy is a theory about why God allows evil to exist in the world.  In other words, a theodicy contains speculations about God’s <i>actual</i> <i>purposes</i> in allowing evil to exist in the world.  And mind you, in order to be a <i>successful</i> theodicy, the purposes stated must be wholly consistent with the notion that God is all-loving.  So what is called for is an explanation of the purposes that a loving God might have in permitting evil to exist.  I think that when I put it this way, this is a topic you may have thought a fair amount about; maybe some of you already have views about it.

I should insert here that some people think that all they have to prove is that a loving God <i>can</i> <i>have</i> <i>some</i> <i>purpose</i> in permitting evil to exist.  These people <i>deny</i> that they have to <i>state</i> God’s purposes.  What would be the point of that?  God’s purposes are not our purposes; the nature of God is mysterious.  So if you are a mystic this view should be attractive to you.  All you have to do is to argue that a loving God <i>might</i> have some reason for allowing the existence of evil; you don’t have to state what the reason is.  I think this is an extremely popular view among Christians.  For two reasons, no doubt: first, it is extremely pious not to try to guess at God’s thoughts; and second, it gives us a justification for not making an actual attempt to explain evil, which promises to be a very difficult task indeed.

But let’s review a few actual attempts to explain evil.  The first is to point to the existence of free will.  God gave us free will; and so we are able to bring evil upon ourselves.  We are to blame for the evils which we inflict and suffer.  This is an unfortunate consequence of our status as free beings; but it is far better that we are free, and hence that we suffer evil, than it would be if we were merely unfree pawns in a perfect game that God played by himself.

This is very persuasive to many people.  But there is a very serious problem with it: very much of the evil that we suffer is not due, in any direct way, to any choices that human beings make.  When the Black Death rode in the late Middle Ages, and wiped out millions upon millions of Europeans, that certainly was not due to any act of any human being.  Or take any natural disaster at all: human beings do not cause, and cannot prevent, devastating earthquakes.  So we should distinguish between <i>moral</i> evil and <i>natural</i> evil, a distinction I’ve been blurring up until now.  Moral evil is any bad thing that humans are responsible for; natural evil is any bad thing, such as an earthquake or flood, that humans are not responsible for.  Human beings are to blame for moral evil; but they are not to blame for natural evil.

"Ah," you may say, "but we are.  Adam and Eve freely committed the Original Sin, of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we have been paying for that great sin ever since."  Now, I don’t want to get into any specific issues of Biblical exegesis and Church doctrine.  But suffice it to say that it would be harsh, to say the least, that <i>absolutely</i> <i>every</i> <i>member</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>human</i> <i>race</i> who came after Adam and Eve should have to pay, throughout their lives, with all manner of suffering, for that Original Sin of Adam and Eve.  I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that does not sound like something that a loving God would do.  There may be a way to explain how a loving God can permit evil; but I doubt that the best way to explain it is to say that we all <i>deserve</i> all the evil we get, because Adam and Eve committed the Original Sin.

So here’s another answer, a more plausible answer, I think.  A universe in which we are tested and improved by having to face evils, is far better than a universe in which we might complacently live in blissful ignorance of evil.  The souls who will inhabit heaven will be far better and stronger if they live in a world beset with all sorts of evils.  Evil improves us.  And so God has allowed Satan to come to the power that he now has.  Satan tempts us and if we resist, we are better for it.  Satan also tests our will and resolve with all sorts of natural evils, earthquakes, floods, and whatnot; and if we pass the test we are better for it.

Now if I wanted to, I could bring a lot of objections to this.  Surely the absolute <i>horrors</i> that humanity has faced, especially in the twentieth century, are unnecessary to improve our moral mettle.  I could, if I wanted to, insist on such objections at length.  But I think we have come to the point where you can see the outlines of the major issues involved in the problem.  So I will leave it to you to hash out the details and to answer any further objections, that might come to you, yourselves.
³3summary³3*³2tscreate³2981080868³2keepts³2981081232³2id³21001³2host³2dhcp058.246.lvcm.com³2revision³21³1username³2JoshuaGrosse³2name³2text_default³2version³21³2ts³2981081232³2ip³2129.97.112.43³2data³2text³3I am going to finish up with the so-called <i>argument</i> <i>from</i> <i>evil</i>, which has, as its conclusion, "God does not exist."  This is also called the <i>problem</i> <i>of</i> <i>evil</i>.  I want to remind you that, just because I am presenting this argument, that does not mean that I think it is a good argument, or that I agree with its conclusion.  I just want you to understand what the argument is, and then you can go and think whatever you like about it.

Now, we have talked about the rationality of <i>theism</i> -- about whether arguments are needed in order to be rational in believing in God, for example.  But we could just as well talk about the rationality of <i>atheism</i>.  If you are an atheist, you would appear to need some arguments <i>that</i> <i>God</i> <i>does</i> <i>not</i> <i>exist</i>.  It would not do simply to refute arguments that God exists.  That would only show that there was no good reason to believe that God exists.  It would <i>not</i> show that there was good reason specifically to believe that God <i>does</i> <i>not</i> exist.  Christians see this and sometimes say: you can’t prove that God <i>does</i> <i>not</i> exist, because you can’t prove a negative; so atheism requires just as much faith as theism does; so at least you should be <i>agnostic</i>.

But some atheistic philosophers insist that one <i>can</i> prove that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist.  You <i>can</i> prove a negative, they say: you <i>can</i> prove that something does not exist.  How?  You show that the very concept of a thing is contrary to known facts.  That’s how the argument from evil goes.  Very briefly, the argument from evil proceeds like this: if God did exist, then he would eliminate evil from the world; but we see evil all around us; therefore, God does not exist.  I am sure you have thought of this problem before.  Now let’s see if we can state it more rigorously, and what objections might be made against it.

Here is the argument, in a more detailed form:

1. If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving.

2. If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it.

3. If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient.

4. If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent.

5. If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving.

6. Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving.

7. But evil does exist in the world.

8. Thus (by premise 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving.

9. Therefore (by premises 1 and 8), God does not exist.  (That is, the God of Judeo-Christian religion, which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving, does not exist.)

Now let’s go back over the premises and see which ones we might criticize.  Remember that if you want to criticize an argument, then either you attack the premises, or you show that the premises do not entail the conclusion.  Now, the way I have formulated the argument from evil, the premises <i>do</i> entail the conclusion: this is a deductively valid argument.  That means that <i>if</i> the premises are all true, <i>then</i> the conclusion must be true.  But that’s not too impressive.  If I had wanted to, I <i>could</i> have formulated the ontological argument and the cosmological arguments as deductively valid arguments; I would then, if I wanted to criticize those arguments, simply attack the premises.  So if you are certain that the conclusion of a valid argument is wrong, one of the premises must be wrong.  You just have to say which one, and say <i>why</i> that one is wrong.

So that’s what we’re going to do here.  We’ll go over the different premises and see whether they can stand up to scrutiny.  Premise (1) just states some basic facts about the Judeo-Christian conception of God: "If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving."  Ordinary Christians certainly do not want to reject premise (1).  Other people might end up rejecting this premise, because they want to believe in a <i>different</i> sort of God.

How about premise (2)?  "If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it."  Why think this?  Well, evil has to have <i>some</i> explanation.  Why would a good God allow evil to exist in the world?  Maybe he doesn’t know about it; or maybe he <i>can’t</i> get rid of it; or maybe he doesn’t <i>want</i> to eliminate it.  But is there any <i>other</i> explanation?  Perhaps, but I don’t think so.  Just ask yourself this: suppose God <i>knew</i> about evil, he <i>could</i> eliminate all of it, and he <i>wanted</i> to eliminate all of it; could evil even <i>possibly</i> exist then?  Surely not.  If God <i>knew</i> about all the evil, and he <i>could</i> get rid of it, and he <i>desired</i> to get rid of it, then God <i>would</i> get rid of it.  But then we simply say: suppose that evil <i>does</i> exist.  In that case, either God doesn’t know about it, he can’t get rid of it, or he doesn’t want to get rid of it.  One of those options is open to us (or perhaps a combination of them).  That’s what premise (2) says.  So I don’t think we can criticize premise (2).

Now look at premise (3).  "If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient."  That seems perfectly true.  If there’s <i>anything</i> that God doesn’t know, then God isn’t omniscient; what it means to be omniscient is to know everything that there is to know.

Similar things can be said about premise (4).  "If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent."  That also seems incontrovertibly true.  If there is anything that God can’t do, anything that doesn’t involve a contradiction anyway, then God isn’t omnipotent.  What it means to be omnipotent is to be able to do everything.  If God were omnipotent then he could certainly eliminate evil.  So I think both premises (3) and (4) have to be accepted.

'''Note:''' Statement 4 is not quite as obvious as it is being made out to be, and in fact the reason has been pointed out: "that doesn't involve a contradiction."  It is often maintained that we live in the best of all possible worlds, so that any change would be a local improvement to global detriment.  I'm not endorsing this view, of course, but I think it means that we should be a little more cautious on that point.

But now what about premise (5)?  "If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving."  This one is more doubtful.  In fact I am sure that a lot of you will want to raise objections to it.  Isn’t it at least <i>possible</i> that God is all-loving, but he still doesn’t want to eliminate evil?  Maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  Well, we’ll elaborate on this objection in a bit.  Just keep in mind that we are going to come back to it; so premise (5) is the first premise we’ve found which is really dubious.

Next consider premise (6).  "Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving."  This follows deductively from premises (2)-(5); the only way to reject premise (6) is to reject (2), (3), (4), or (5); and so if we end up deny premise (5), that will be enough to allow us to say that (6) is false.

What about premise (7)?  "But evil does exist in the world."  Some people deny this.  But how?  How could anyone possibly deny that evil exists in the world?

Some people say that evil is <i>merely</i> an <i>appearance</i>; it is <i>only</i> an illusion.  Nothing is <i>really</i> evil.  I suppose the idea is that if you get yourself into the right frame of mind, probably a rather fuzzy frame of mind, then evil seems powerless and inconsequential.  What really matters is goodness, happiness, love, or something like that; so evil doesn’t matter, and in a sense it doesn’t really exist.

I have to admit that I have a hard time taking that view seriously.  First of all, even if evil "doesn’t matter," that certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t <i>exist</i>.  Because plainly it <i>does</i> exist.  Hitler exterminated six million Jews; that wasn’t evil?  People suffer from debilitating diseases all around the world; that’s not an evil we all potentially face?  People are regularly killed by tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.  Those events aren’t really evil?  Their obvious hatefulness is illusory?  That seems ridiculous.  Unless you have some sophisticated way to explain <i>why</i> evil is merely illusory, this view can be safely rejected.  I seriously doubt you can solve the problem of evil by simply <i>denying</i> that evil exists.

Premise (8) reads: "Thus (by premises 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving."  This is a further inference from earlier premises, so the only way that we can reject <i>it</i> is by rejecting those earlier premises.

So after going over each premise of the argument from evil, we have found just <i>one</i> premise, namely (5), that gives us substantial hope of escaping the conclusion.  As I said, maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  But how?  How could a God that is all-loving allow evil not only to exist, but to <i>flourish</i> in the world?  That is the project of giving a <i>theodicy</i>.  A theodicy is a theory about why God allows evil to exist in the world.  In other words, a theodicy contains speculations about God’s <i>actual</i> <i>purposes</i> in allowing evil to exist in the world.  And mind you, in order to be a <i>successful</i> theodicy, the purposes stated must be wholly consistent with the notion that God is all-loving.  So what is called for is an explanation of the purposes that a loving God might have in permitting evil to exist.  I think that when I put it this way, this is a topic you may have thought a fair amount about; maybe some of you already have views about it.

I should insert here that some people think that all they have to prove is that a loving God <i>can</i> <i>have</i> <i>some</i> <i>purpose</i> in permitting evil to exist.  These people <i>deny</i> that they have to <i>state</i> God’s purposes.  What would be the point of that?  God’s purposes are not our purposes; the nature of God is mysterious.  So if you are a mystic this view should be attractive to you.  All you have to do is to argue that a loving God <i>might</i> have some reason for allowing the existence of evil; you don’t have to state what the reason is.  I think this is an extremely popular view among Christians.  For two reasons, no doubt: first, it is extremely pious not to try to guess at God’s thoughts; and second, it gives us a justification for not making an actual attempt to explain evil, which promises to be a very difficult task indeed.

But let’s review a few actual attempts to explain evil.  The first is to point to the existence of free will.  God gave us free will; and so we are able to bring evil upon ourselves.  We are to blame for the evils which we inflict and suffer.  This is an unfortunate consequence of our status as free beings; but it is far better that we are free, and hence that we suffer evil, than it would be if we were merely unfree pawns in a perfect game that God played by himself.

This is very persuasive to many people.  But there is a very serious problem with it: very much of the evil that we suffer is not due, in any direct way, to any choices that human beings make.  When the Black Death rode in the late Middle Ages, and wiped out millions upon millions of Europeans, that certainly was not due to any act of any human being.  Or take any natural disaster at all: human beings do not cause, and cannot prevent, devastating earthquakes.  So we should distinguish between <i>moral</i> evil and <i>natural</i> evil, a distinction I’ve been blurring up until now.  Moral evil is any bad thing that humans are responsible for; natural evil is any bad thing, such as an earthquake or flood, that humans are not responsible for.  Human beings are to blame for moral evil; but they are not to blame for natural evil.

"Ah," you may say, "but we are.  Adam and Eve freely committed the Original Sin, of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we have been paying for that great sin ever since."  Now, I don’t want to get into any specific issues of Biblical exegesis and Church doctrine.  But suffice it to say that it would be harsh, to say the least, that <i>absolutely</i> <i>every</i> <i>member</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>human</i> <i>race</i> who came after Adam and Eve should have to pay, throughout their lives, with all manner of suffering, for that Original Sin of Adam and Eve.  I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that does not sound like something that a loving God would do.  There may be a way to explain how a loving God can permit evil; but I doubt that the best way to explain it is to say that we all <i>deserve</i> all the evil we get, because Adam and Eve committed the Original Sin.

So here’s another answer, a more plausible answer, I think.  A universe in which we are tested and improved by having to face evils, is far better than a universe in which we might complacently live in blissful ignorance of evil.  The souls who will inhabit heaven will be far better and stronger if they live in a world beset with all sorts of evils.  Evil improves us.  And so God has allowed Satan to come to the power that he now has.  Satan tempts us and if we resist, we are better for it.  Satan also tests our will and resolve with all sorts of natural evils, earthquakes, floods, and whatnot; and if we pass the test we are better for it.

Now if I wanted to, I could bring a lot of objections to this.  Surely the absolute <i>horrors</i> that humanity has faced, especially in the twentieth century, are unnecessary to improve our moral mettle.  I could, if I wanted to, insist on such objections at length.  But I think we have come to the point where you can see the outlines of the major issues involved in the problem.  So I will leave it to you to hash out the details and to answer any further objections, that might come to you, yourselves.
³3minor³30³3newauthor³31³3summary³3Criticism of statement 4³2tscreate³2981080868³2keepts³2981083901³2id³21076³2host³2cnts1p43.uwaterloo.ca³2revision³22³1username³2JoshuaGrosse³2name³2text_default³2version³21³2ts³2981083901³2ip³2129.97.112.43³2data³2newauthor³30³3minor³30³3text³3I am going to finish up with the so-called <i>argument</i> <i>from</i> <i>evil</i>, which has, as its conclusion, "God does not exist."  This is also called the <i>problem</i> <i>of</i> <i>evil</i>.  I want to remind you that, just because I am presenting this argument, that does not mean that I think it is a good argument, or that I agree with its conclusion.  I just want you to understand what the argument is, and then you can go and think whatever you like about it.

Now, we have talked about the rationality of <i>theism</i> -- about whether arguments are needed in order to be rational in believing in God, for example.  But we could just as well talk about the rationality of <i>atheism</i>.  If you are an atheist, you would appear to need some arguments <i>that</i> <i>God</i> <i>does</i> <i>not</i> <i>exist</i>.  It would not do simply to refute arguments that God exists.  That would only show that there was no good reason to believe that God exists.  It would <i>not</i> show that there was good reason specifically to believe that God <i>does</i> <i>not</i> exist.  Christians see this and sometimes say: you can’t prove that God <i>does</i> <i>not</i> exist, because you can’t prove a negative; so atheism requires just as much faith as theism does; so at least you should be <i>agnostic</i>.

But some atheistic philosophers insist that one <i>can</i> prove that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist.  You <i>can</i> prove a negative, they say: you <i>can</i> prove that something does not exist.  How?  You show that the very concept of a thing is contrary to known facts.  That’s how the argument from evil goes.  Very briefly, the argument from evil proceeds like this: if God did exist, then he would eliminate evil from the world; but we see evil all around us; therefore, God does not exist.  I am sure you have thought of this problem before.  Now let’s see if we can state it more rigorously, and what objections might be made against it.

Here is the argument, in a more detailed form:

1. If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving.

2. If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it.

3. If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient.

4. If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent.

5. If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving.

6. Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving.

7. But evil does exist in the world.

8. Thus (by premise 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving.

9. Therefore (by premises 1 and 8), God does not exist.  (That is, the God of Judeo-Christian religion, which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving, does not exist.)

Now let’s go back over the premises and see which ones we might criticize.  Remember that if you want to criticize an argument, then either you attack the premises, or you show that the premises do not entail the conclusion.  Now, the way I have formulated the argument from evil, the premises <i>do</i> entail the conclusion: this is a deductively valid argument.  That means that <i>if</i> the premises are all true, <i>then</i> the conclusion must be true.  But that’s not too impressive.  If I had wanted to, I <i>could</i> have formulated the ontological argument and the cosmological arguments as deductively valid arguments; I would then, if I wanted to criticize those arguments, simply attack the premises.  So if you are certain that the conclusion of a valid argument is wrong, one of the premises must be wrong.  You just have to say which one, and say <i>why</i> that one is wrong.

So that’s what we’re going to do here.  We’ll go over the different premises and see whether they can stand up to scrutiny.  Premise (1) just states some basic facts about the Judeo-Christian conception of God: "If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving."  Ordinary Christians certainly do not want to reject premise (1).  Other people might end up rejecting this premise, because they want to believe in a <i>different</i> sort of God.

How about premise (2)?  "If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it."  Why think this?  Well, evil has to have <i>some</i> explanation.  Why would a good God allow evil to exist in the world?  Maybe he doesn’t know about it; or maybe he <i>can’t</i> get rid of it; or maybe he doesn’t <i>want</i> to eliminate it.  But is there any <i>other</i> explanation?  Perhaps, but I don’t think so.  Just ask yourself this: suppose God <i>knew</i> about evil, he <i>could</i> eliminate all of it, and he <i>wanted</i> to eliminate all of it; could evil even <i>possibly</i> exist then?  Surely not.  If God <i>knew</i> about all the evil, and he <i>could</i> get rid of it, and he <i>desired</i> to get rid of it, then God <i>would</i> get rid of it.  But then we simply say: suppose that evil <i>does</i> exist.  In that case, either God doesn’t know about it, he can’t get rid of it, or he doesn’t want to get rid of it.  One of those options is open to us (or perhaps a combination of them).  That’s what premise (2) says.  So I don’t think we can criticize premise (2).

Now look at premise (3).  "If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient."  That seems perfectly true.  If there’s <i>anything</i> that God doesn’t know, then God isn’t omniscient; what it means to be omniscient is to know everything that there is to know.

Similar things can be said about premise (4).  "If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent."  That also seems incontrovertibly true.  If there is anything that God can’t do, anything that doesn’t involve a contradiction anyway, then God isn’t omnipotent.  It is sometimes held that to eliminate evil ''would'' result in a contradiction - that is, we live in the best of all possible worlds.  However, without a lot more justification this can be ignored for the time being.  If God were omnipotent then he could certainly eliminate evil.  So I think both premises (3) and (4) have to be accepted.

But now what about premise (5)?  "If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving."  This one is more doubtful.  In fact I am sure that a lot of you will want to raise objections to it.  Isn’t it at least <i>possible</i> that God is all-loving, but he still doesn’t want to eliminate evil?  Maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  Well, we’ll elaborate on this objection in a bit.  Just keep in mind that we are going to come back to it; so premise (5) is the first premise we’ve found which is really dubious.

Next consider premise (6).  "Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving."  This follows deductively from premises (2)-(5); the only way to reject premise (6) is to reject (2), (3), (4), or (5); and so if we end up deny premise (5), that will be enough to allow us to say that (6) is false.

What about premise (7)?  "But evil does exist in the world."  Some people deny this.  But how?  How could anyone possibly deny that evil exists in the world?

Some people say that evil is <i>merely</i> an <i>appearance</i>; it is <i>only</i> an illusion.  Nothing is <i>really</i> evil.  I suppose the idea is that if you get yourself into the right frame of mind, probably a rather fuzzy frame of mind, then evil seems powerless and inconsequential.  What really matters is goodness, happiness, love, or something like that; so evil doesn’t matter, and in a sense it doesn’t really exist.

I have to admit that I have a hard time taking that view seriously.  First of all, even if evil "doesn’t matter," that certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t <i>exist</i>.  Because plainly it <i>does</i> exist.  Hitler exterminated six million Jews; that wasn’t evil?  People suffer from debilitating diseases all around the world; that’s not an evil we all potentially face?  People are regularly killed by tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.  Those events aren’t really evil?  Their obvious hatefulness is illusory?  That seems ridiculous.  Unless you have some sophisticated way to explain <i>why</i> evil is merely illusory, this view can be safely rejected.  I seriously doubt you can solve the problem of evil by simply <i>denying</i> that evil exists.

Premise (8) reads: "Thus (by premises 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving."  This is a further inference from earlier premises, so the only way that we can reject <i>it</i> is by rejecting those earlier premises.

So after going over each premise of the argument from evil, we have found just <i>one</i> premise, namely (5), and ''perhaps'' also statement 4, that gives us substantial hope of escaping the conclusion.  As I said, maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  But how?  How could a God that is all-loving allow evil not only to exist, but to <i>flourish</i> in the world?  That is the project of giving a <i>theodicy</i>.  A theodicy is a theory about why God allows evil to exist in the world.  In other words, a theodicy contains speculations about God’s <i>actual</i> <i>purposes</i> in allowing evil to exist in the world.  And mind you, in order to be a <i>successful</i> theodicy, the purposes stated must be wholly consistent with the notion that God is all-loving.  So what is called for is an explanation of the purposes that a loving God might have in permitting evil to exist.  I think that when I put it this way, this is a topic you may have thought a fair amount about; maybe some of you already have views about it.

I should insert here that some people think that all they have to prove is that a loving God <i>can</i> <i>have</i> <i>some</i> <i>purpose</i> in permitting evil to exist.  These people <i>deny</i> that they have to <i>state</i> God’s purposes.  What would be the point of that?  God’s purposes are not our purposes; the nature of God is mysterious.  So if you are a mystic this view should be attractive to you.  All you have to do is to argue that a loving God <i>might</i> have some reason for allowing the existence of evil; you don’t have to state what the reason is.  I think this is an extremely popular view among Christians.  For two reasons, no doubt: first, it is extremely pious not to try to guess at God’s thoughts; and second, it gives us a justification for not making an actual attempt to explain evil, which promises to be a very difficult task indeed.

But let’s review a few actual attempts to explain evil.  The first is to point to the existence of free will.  God gave us free will; and so we are able to bring evil upon ourselves.  We are to blame for the evils which we inflict and suffer.  This is an unfortunate consequence of our status as free beings; but it is far better that we are free, and hence that we suffer evil, than it would be if we were merely unfree pawns in a perfect game that God played by himself.

This is very persuasive to many people.  But there is a very serious problem with it: very much of the evil that we suffer is not due, in any direct way, to any choices that human beings make.  When the Black Death rode in the late Middle Ages, and wiped out millions upon millions of Europeans, that certainly was not due to any act of any human being.  Or take any natural disaster at all: human beings do not cause, and cannot prevent, devastating earthquakes.  So we should distinguish between <i>moral</i> evil and <i>natural</i> evil, a distinction I’ve been blurring up until now.  Moral evil is any bad thing that humans are responsible for; natural evil is any bad thing, such as an earthquake or flood, that humans are not responsible for.  Human beings are to blame for moral evil; but they are not to blame for natural evil.

"Ah," you may say, "but we are.  Adam and Eve freely committed the Original Sin, of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we have been paying for that great sin ever since."  Now, I don’t want to get into any specific issues of Biblical exegesis and Church doctrine.  But suffice it to say that it would be harsh, to say the least, that <i>absolutely</i> <i>every</i> <i>member</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>human</i> <i>race</i> who came after Adam and Eve should have to pay, throughout their lives, with all manner of suffering, for that Original Sin of Adam and Eve.  I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that does not sound like something that a loving God would do.  There may be a way to explain how a loving God can permit evil; but I doubt that the best way to explain it is to say that we all <i>deserve</i> all the evil we get, because Adam and Eve committed the Original Sin.

So here’s another answer, a more plausible answer, I think.  A universe in which we are tested and improved by having to face evils, is far better than a universe in which we might complacently live in blissful ignorance of evil.  The souls who will inhabit heaven will be far better and stronger if they live in a world beset with all sorts of evils.  Evil improves us.  And so God has allowed Satan to come to the power that he now has.  Satan tempts us and if we resist, we are better for it.  Satan also tests our will and resolve with all sorts of natural evils, earthquakes, floods, and whatnot; and if we pass the test we are better for it.

Now if I wanted to, I could bring a lot of objections to this.  Surely the absolute <i>horrors</i> that humanity has faced, especially in the twentieth century, are unnecessary to improve our moral mettle.  I could, if I wanted to, insist on such objections at length.  But I think we have come to the point where you can see the outlines of the major issues involved in the problem.  So I will leave it to you to hash out the details and to answer any further objections, that might come to you, yourselves.
³3summary³3Edited statement 4, as suggested on LarrysText³2tscreate³2981080868³2keepts³2981086871³2id³21076³2host³2cnts1p43.uwaterloo.ca³2revision³23³1username³2PhillipHankins³2name³2text_default³2version³21³2ts³2981086871³2ip³224.190.57.186³2data³2text³3<the following is a portion (partly edited) of LarrysText, wikification is encouraged>

I am going to finish up with the so-called <i>argument</i> <i>from</i> <i>evil</i>, which has, as its conclusion, "God does not exist."  This is also called the <i>problem</i> <i>of</i> <i>evil</i>.  I want to remind you that, just because I am presenting this argument, that does not mean that I think it is a good argument, or that I agree with its conclusion.  I just want you to understand what the argument is, and then you can go and think whatever you like about it.

Now, we have talked about the rationality of <i>theism</i> -- about whether arguments are needed in order to be rational in believing in God, for example.  But we could just as well talk about the rationality of <i>atheism</i>.  If you are an atheist, you would appear to need some arguments <i>that</i> <i>God</i> <i>does</i> <i>not</i> <i>exist</i>.  It would not do simply to refute arguments that God exists.  That would only show that there was no good reason to believe that God exists.  It would <i>not</i> show that there was good reason specifically to believe that God <i>does</i> <i>not</i> exist.  Christians see this and sometimes say: you can’t prove that God <i>does</i> <i>not</i> exist, because you can’t prove a negative; so atheism requires just as much faith as theism does; so at least you should be <i>agnostic</i>.

But some atheistic philosophers insist that one <i>can</i> prove that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist.  You <i>can</i> prove a negative, they say: you <i>can</i> prove that something does not exist.  How?  You show that the very concept of a thing is contrary to known facts.  That’s how the argument from evil goes.  Very briefly, the argument from evil proceeds like this: if God did exist, then he would eliminate evil from the world; but we see evil all around us; therefore, God does not exist.  I am sure you have thought of this problem before.  Now let’s see if we can state it more rigorously, and what objections might be made against it.

Here is the argument, in a more detailed form:

1. If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving.

2. If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it.

3. If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient.

4. If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent.

5. If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving.

6. Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving.

7. But evil does exist in the world.

8. Thus (by premise 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving.

9. Therefore (by premises 1 and 8), God does not exist.  (That is, the God of Judeo-Christian religion, which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving, does not exist.)

Now let’s go back over the premises and see which ones we might criticize.  Remember that if you want to criticize an argument, then either you attack the premises, or you show that the premises do not entail the conclusion.  Now, the way I have formulated the argument from evil, the premises <i>do</i> entail the conclusion: this is a deductively valid argument.  That means that <i>if</i> the premises are all true, <i>then</i> the conclusion must be true.  But that’s not too impressive.  If I had wanted to, I <i>could</i> have formulated the ontological argument and the cosmological arguments as deductively valid arguments; I would then, if I wanted to criticize those arguments, simply attack the premises.  So if you are certain that the conclusion of a valid argument is wrong, one of the premises must be wrong.  You just have to say which one, and say <i>why</i> that one is wrong.

So that’s what we’re going to do here.  We’ll go over the different premises and see whether they can stand up to scrutiny.  Premise (1) just states some basic facts about the Judeo-Christian conception of God: "If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving."  Ordinary Christians certainly do not want to reject premise (1).  Other people might end up rejecting this premise, because they want to believe in a <i>different</i> sort of God.

How about premise (2)?  "If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it."  Why think this?  Well, evil has to have <i>some</i> explanation.  Why would a good God allow evil to exist in the world?  Maybe he doesn’t know about it; or maybe he <i>can’t</i> get rid of it; or maybe he doesn’t <i>want</i> to eliminate it.  But is there any <i>other</i> explanation?  Perhaps, but I don’t think so.  Just ask yourself this: suppose God <i>knew</i> about evil, he <i>could</i> eliminate all of it, and he <i>wanted</i> to eliminate all of it; could evil even <i>possibly</i> exist then?  Surely not.  If God <i>knew</i> about all the evil, and he <i>could</i> get rid of it, and he <i>desired</i> to get rid of it, then God <i>would</i> get rid of it.  But then we simply say: suppose that evil <i>does</i> exist.  In that case, either God doesn’t know about it, he can’t get rid of it, or he doesn’t want to get rid of it.  One of those options is open to us (or perhaps a combination of them).  That’s what premise (2) says.  So I don’t think we can criticize premise (2).

Now look at premise (3).  "If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient."  That seems perfectly true.  If there’s <i>anything</i> that God doesn’t know, then God isn’t omniscient; what it means to be omniscient is to know everything that there is to know.

Similar things can be said about premise (4).  "If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent."  That also seems incontrovertibly true.  If there is anything that God can’t do, anything that doesn’t involve a contradiction anyway, then God isn’t omnipotent.  It is sometimes held that to eliminate evil ''would'' result in a contradiction - that is, we live in the best of all possible worlds.  However, without a lot more justification this can be ignored for the time being.  If God were omnipotent then he could certainly eliminate evil.  So I think both premises (3) and (4) have to be accepted.

But now what about premise (5)?  "If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving."  This one is more doubtful.  In fact I am sure that a lot of you will want to raise objections to it.  Isn’t it at least <i>possible</i> that God is all-loving, but he still doesn’t want to eliminate evil?  Maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  Well, we’ll elaborate on this objection in a bit.  Just keep in mind that we are going to come back to it; so premise (5) is the first premise we’ve found which is really dubious.

Next consider premise (6).  "Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving."  This follows deductively from premises (2)-(5); the only way to reject premise (6) is to reject (2), (3), (4), or (5); and so if we end up deny premise (5), that will be enough to allow us to say that (6) is false.

What about premise (7)?  "But evil does exist in the world."  Some people deny this.  But how?  How could anyone possibly deny that evil exists in the world?

Some people say that evil is <i>merely</i> an <i>appearance</i>; it is <i>only</i> an illusion.  Nothing is <i>really</i> evil.  I suppose the idea is that if you get yourself into the right frame of mind, probably a rather fuzzy frame of mind, then evil seems powerless and inconsequential.  What really matters is goodness, happiness, love, or something like that; so evil doesn’t matter, and in a sense it doesn’t really exist.

I have to admit that I have a hard time taking that view seriously.  First of all, even if evil "doesn’t matter," that certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t <i>exist</i>.  Because plainly it <i>does</i> exist.  Hitler exterminated six million Jews; that wasn’t evil?  People suffer from debilitating diseases all around the world; that’s not an evil we all potentially face?  People are regularly killed by tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.  Those events aren’t really evil?  Their obvious hatefulness is illusory?  That seems ridiculous.  Unless you have some sophisticated way to explain <i>why</i> evil is merely illusory, this view can be safely rejected.  I seriously doubt you can solve the problem of evil by simply <i>denying</i> that evil exists.

Premise (8) reads: "Thus (by premises 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving."  This is a further inference from earlier premises, so the only way that we can reject <i>it</i> is by rejecting those earlier premises.

So after going over each premise of the argument from evil, we have found just <i>one</i> premise, namely (5), and ''perhaps'' also statement 4, that gives us substantial hope of escaping the conclusion.  As I said, maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  But how?  How could a God that is all-loving allow evil not only to exist, but to <i>flourish</i> in the world?  That is the project of giving a <i>theodicy</i>.  A theodicy is a theory about why God allows evil to exist in the world.  In other words, a theodicy contains speculations about God’s <i>actual</i> <i>purposes</i> in allowing evil to exist in the world.  And mind you, in order to be a <i>successful</i> theodicy, the purposes stated must be wholly consistent with the notion that God is all-loving.  So what is called for is an explanation of the purposes that a loving God might have in permitting evil to exist.  I think that when I put it this way, this is a topic you may have thought a fair amount about; maybe some of you already have views about it.

I should insert here that some people think that all they have to prove is that a loving God <i>can</i> <i>have</i> <i>some</i> <i>purpose</i> in permitting evil to exist.  These people <i>deny</i> that they have to <i>state</i> God’s purposes.  What would be the point of that?  God’s purposes are not our purposes; the nature of God is mysterious.  So if you are a mystic this view should be attractive to you.  All you have to do is to argue that a loving God <i>might</i> have some reason for allowing the existence of evil; you don’t have to state what the reason is.  I think this is an extremely popular view among Christians.  For two reasons, no doubt: first, it is extremely pious not to try to guess at God’s thoughts; and second, it gives us a justification for not making an actual attempt to explain evil, which promises to be a very difficult task indeed.

But let’s review a few actual attempts to explain evil.  The first is to point to the existence of free will.  God gave us free will; and so we are able to bring evil upon ourselves.  We are to blame for the evils which we inflict and suffer.  This is an unfortunate consequence of our status as free beings; but it is far better that we are free, and hence that we suffer evil, than it would be if we were merely unfree pawns in a perfect game that God played by himself.

This is very persuasive to many people.  But there is a very serious problem with it: very much of the evil that we suffer is not due, in any direct way, to any choices that human beings make.  When the Black Death rode in the late Middle Ages, and wiped out millions upon millions of Europeans, that certainly was not due to any act of any human being.  Or take any natural disaster at all: human beings do not cause, and cannot prevent, devastating earthquakes.  So we should distinguish between <i>moral</i> evil and <i>natural</i> evil, a distinction I’ve been blurring up until now.  Moral evil is any bad thing that humans are responsible for; natural evil is any bad thing, such as an earthquake or flood, that humans are not responsible for.  Human beings are to blame for moral evil; but they are not to blame for natural evil.

"Ah," you may say, "but we are.  Adam and Eve freely committed the Original Sin, of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we have been paying for that great sin ever since."  Now, I don’t want to get into any specific issues of Biblical exegesis and Church doctrine.  But suffice it to say that it would be harsh, to say the least, that <i>absolutely</i> <i>every</i> <i>member</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>human</i> <i>race</i> who came after Adam and Eve should have to pay, throughout their lives, with all manner of suffering, for that Original Sin of Adam and Eve.  I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that does not sound like something that a loving God would do.  There may be a way to explain how a loving God can permit evil; but I doubt that the best way to explain it is to say that we all <i>deserve</i> all the evil we get, because Adam and Eve committed the Original Sin.

So here’s another answer, a more plausible answer, I think.  A universe in which we are tested and improved by having to face evils, is far better than a universe in which we might complacently live in blissful ignorance of evil.  The souls who will inhabit heaven will be far better and stronger if they live in a world beset with all sorts of evils.  Evil improves us.  And so God has allowed Satan to come to the power that he now has.  Satan tempts us and if we resist, we are better for it.  Satan also tests our will and resolve with all sorts of natural evils, earthquakes, floods, and whatnot; and if we pass the test we are better for it.

Now if I wanted to, I could bring a lot of objections to this.  Surely the absolute <i>horrors</i> that humanity has faced, especially in the twentieth century, are unnecessary to improve our moral mettle.  I could, if I wanted to, insist on such objections at length.  But I think we have come to the point where you can see the outlines of the major issues involved in the problem.  So I will leave it to you to hash out the details and to answer any further objections, that might come to you, yourselves.
³3minor³31³3newauthor³31³3summary³3*³2tscreate³2981080868³2keepts³2982072569³2id³21156³2host³2ool-18be39ba.dyn.optonline.net³2revision³24³1username³2RaviDesai³2name³2text_default³2version³21³2ts³2982072569³2ip³2209.66.79.109³2data³2newauthor³31³3minor³30³3text³3<the following is a portion (partly edited) of LarrysText, wikification is encouraged>

I am going to finish up with the so-called <i>argument</i> <i>from</i> <i>evil</i>, which has, as its conclusion, "God does not exist."  This is also called the <i>problem</i> <i>of</i> <i>evil</i>.  I want to remind you that, just because I am presenting this argument, that does not mean that I think it is a good argument, or that I agree with its conclusion.  I just want you to understand what the argument is, and then you can go and think whatever you like about it.

Now, we have talked about the rationality of <i>theism</i> -- about whether arguments are needed in order to be rational in believing in God, for example.  But we could just as well talk about the rationality of <i>atheism</i>.  If you are an atheist, you would appear to need some arguments <i>that</i> <i>God</i> <i>does</i> <i>not</i> <i>exist</i>.  It would not do simply to refute arguments that God exists.  That would only show that there was no good reason to believe that God exists.  It would <i>not</i> show that there was good reason specifically to believe that God <i>does</i> <i>not</i> exist.  Christians see this and sometimes say: you can’t prove that God <i>does</i> <i>not</i> exist, because you can’t prove a negative; so atheism requires just as much faith as theism does; so at least you should be <i>agnostic</i>.

But some atheistic philosophers insist that one <i>can</i> prove that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist.  You <i>can</i> prove a negative, they say: you <i>can</i> prove that something does not exist.  How?  You show that the very concept of a thing is contrary to known facts.  That’s how the argument from evil goes.  Very briefly, the argument from evil proceeds like this: if God did exist, then he would eliminate evil from the world; but we see evil all around us; therefore, God does not exist.  I am sure you have thought of this problem before.  Now let’s see if we can state it more rigorously, and what objections might be made against it.

Here is the argument, in a more detailed form:

1. If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving.

2. If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it.

3. If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient.

4. If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent.

5. If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving.

6. Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving.

7. But evil does exist in the world.

8. Thus (by premise 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving.

9. Therefore (by premises 1 and 8), God does not exist.  (That is, the God of Judeo-Christian religion, which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving, does not exist.)

Now let’s go back over the premises and see which ones we might criticize.  Remember that if you want to criticize an argument, then either you attack the premises, or you show that the premises do not entail the conclusion.  Now, the way I have formulated the argument from evil, the premises <i>do</i> entail the conclusion: this is a deductively valid argument.  That means that <i>if</i> the premises are all true, <i>then</i> the conclusion must be true.  But that’s not too impressive.  If I had wanted to, I <i>could</i> have formulated the ontological argument and the cosmological arguments as deductively valid arguments; I would then, if I wanted to criticize those arguments, simply attack the premises.  So if you are certain that the conclusion of a valid argument is wrong, one of the premises must be wrong.  You just have to say which one, and say <i>why</i> that one is wrong.

So that’s what we’re going to do here.  We’ll go over the different premises and see whether they can stand up to scrutiny.  Premise (1) just states some basic facts about the Judeo-Christian conception of God: "If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving."  Ordinary Christians certainly do not want to reject premise (1).  Other people might end up rejecting this premise, because they want to believe in a <i>different</i> sort of God.

How about premise (2)?  "If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it."  Why think this?  Well, evil has to have <i>some</i> explanation.  Why would a good God allow evil to exist in the world?  Maybe he doesn’t know about it; or maybe he <i>can’t</i> get rid of it; or maybe he doesn’t <i>want</i> to eliminate it.  But is there any <i>other</i> explanation?  Perhaps, but I don’t think so.  Just ask yourself this: suppose God <i>knew</i> about evil, he <i>could</i> eliminate all of it, and he <i>wanted</i> to eliminate all of it; could evil even <i>possibly</i> exist then?  Surely not.  If God <i>knew</i> about all the evil, and he <i>could</i> get rid of it, and he <i>desired</i> to get rid of it, then God <i>would</i> get rid of it.  But then we simply say: suppose that evil <i>does</i> exist.  In that case, either God doesn’t know about it, he can’t get rid of it, or he doesn’t want to get rid of it.  One of those options is open to us (or perhaps a combination of them).  That’s what premise (2) says.  So I don’t think we can criticize premise (2).

Now look at premise (3).  "If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient."  That seems perfectly true.  If there’s <i>anything</i> that God doesn’t know, then God isn’t omniscient; what it means to be omniscient is to know everything that there is to know.

Similar things can be said about premise (4).  "If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent."  That also seems incontrovertibly true.  If there is anything that God can’t do, anything that doesn’t involve a contradiction anyway, then God isn’t omnipotent.  It is sometimes held that to eliminate evil ''would'' result in a contradiction - that is, we live in the best of all possible worlds.  However, without a lot more justification this can be ignored for the time being.  If God were omnipotent then he could certainly eliminate evil.  So I think both premises (3) and (4) have to be accepted.

But now what about premise (5)?  "If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving."  This one is more doubtful.  In fact I am sure that a lot of you will want to raise objections to it.  Isn’t it at least <i>possible</i> that God is all-loving, but he still doesn’t want to eliminate evil?  Maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  Well, we’ll elaborate on this objection in a bit.  Just keep in mind that we are going to come back to it; so premise (5) is the first premise we’ve found which is really dubious.

Next consider premise (6).  "Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving."  This follows deductively from premises (2)-(5); the only way to reject premise (6) is to reject (2), (3), (4), or (5); and so if we end up deny premise (5), that will be enough to allow us to say that (6) is false.

What about premise (7)?  "But evil does exist in the world."  Some people deny this.  But how?  How could anyone possibly deny that evil exists in the world?

Some people say that evil is <i>merely</i> an <i>appearance</i>; it is <i>only</i> an illusion.  Nothing is <i>really</i> evil.  I suppose the idea is that if you get yourself into the right frame of mind, probably a rather fuzzy frame of mind, then evil seems powerless and inconsequential.  What really matters is goodness, happiness, love, or something like that; so evil doesn’t matter, and in a sense it doesn’t really exist.

I have to admit that I have a hard time taking that view seriously.  First of all, even if evil "doesn’t matter," that certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t <i>exist</i>.  Because plainly it <i>does</i> exist.  Hitler exterminated six million Jews; that wasn’t evil?  People suffer from debilitating diseases all around the world; that’s not an evil we all potentially face?  People are regularly killed by tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.  Those events aren’t really evil?  Their obvious hatefulness is illusory?  That seems ridiculous.  Unless you have some sophisticated way to explain <i>why</i> evil is merely illusory, this view can be safely rejected.  I seriously doubt you can solve the problem of evil by simply <i>denying</i> that evil exists.

Premise (8) reads: "Thus (by premises 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving."  This is a further inference from earlier premises, so the only way that we can reject <i>it</i> is by rejecting those earlier premises.

So after going over each premise of the argument from evil, we have found just <i>one</i> premise, namely (5), and ''perhaps'' also statement 4, that gives us substantial hope of escaping the conclusion.  As I said, maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  But how?  How could a God that is all-loving allow evil not only to exist, but to <i>flourish</i> in the world?  That is the project of giving a <i>theodicy</i>.  A theodicy is a theory about why God allows evil to exist in the world.  In other words, a theodicy contains speculations about God’s <i>actual</i> <i>purposes</i> in allowing evil to exist in the world.  And mind you, in order to be a <i>successful</i> theodicy, the purposes stated must be wholly consistent with the notion that God is all-loving.  So what is called for is an explanation of the purposes that a loving God might have in permitting evil to exist.  I think that when I put it this way, this is a topic you may have thought a fair amount about; maybe some of you already have views about it.

I should insert here that some people think that all they have to prove is that a loving God <i>can</i> <i>have</i> <i>some</i> <i>purpose</i> in permitting evil to exist.  These people <i>deny</i> that they have to <i>state</i> God’s purposes.  What would be the point of that?  God’s purposes are not our purposes; the nature of God is mysterious.  So if you are a mystic this view should be attractive to you.  All you have to do is to argue that a loving God <i>might</i> have some reason for allowing the existence of evil; you don’t have to state what the reason is.  I think this is an extremely popular view among Christians.  For two reasons, no doubt: first, it is extremely pious not to try to guess at God’s thoughts; and second, it gives us a justification for not making an actual attempt to explain evil, which promises to be a very difficult task indeed.

But let’s review a few actual attempts to explain evil.  The first is to point to the existence of free will.  God gave us free will; and so we are able to bring evil upon ourselves.  We are to blame for the evils which we inflict and suffer.  This is an unfortunate consequence of our status as free beings; but it is far better that we are free, and hence that we suffer evil, than it would be if we were merely unfree pawns in a perfect game that God played by himself.

This is very persuasive to many people.  But there is a very serious problem with it: very much of the evil that we suffer is not due, in any direct way, to any choices that human beings make.  When the Black Death rode in the late Middle Ages, and wiped out millions upon millions of Europeans, that certainly was not due to any act of any human being.  Or take any natural disaster at all: human beings do not cause, and cannot prevent, devastating earthquakes.  So we should distinguish between <i>moral</i> evil and <i>natural</i> evil, a distinction I’ve been blurring up until now.  Moral evil is any bad thing that humans are responsible for; natural evil is any bad thing, such as an earthquake or flood, that humans are not responsible for.  Human beings are to blame for moral evil; but they are not to blame for natural evil.

"Ah," you may say, "but we are.  Adam and Eve freely committed the Original Sin, of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we have been paying for that great sin ever since."  Now, I don’t want to get into any specific issues of Biblical exegesis and Church doctrine.  But suffice it to say that it would be harsh, to say the least, that <i>absolutely</i> <i>every</i> <i>member</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>human</i> <i>race</i> who came after Adam and Eve should have to pay, throughout their lives, with all manner of suffering, for that Original Sin of Adam and Eve.  I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that does not sound like something that a loving God would do.  There may be a way to explain how a loving God can permit evil; but I doubt that the best way to explain it is to say that we all <i>deserve</i> all the evil we get, because Adam and Eve committed the Original Sin.

So here’s another answer, a more plausible answer, I think.  A universe in which we are tested and improved by having to face evils, is far better than a universe in which we might complacently live in blissful ignorance of evil.  The souls who will inhabit heaven will be far better and stronger if they live in a world beset with all sorts of evils.  Evil improves us.  And so God has allowed Satan to come to the power that he now has.  Satan tempts us and if we resist, we are better for it.  Satan also tests our will and resolve with all sorts of natural evils, earthquakes, floods, and whatnot; and if we pass the test we are better for it.

Now if I wanted to, I could bring a lot of objections to this.  Surely the absolute <i>horrors</i> that humanity has faced, especially in the twentieth century, are unnecessary to improve our moral mettle.  I could, if I wanted to, insist on such objections at length.  But I think we have come to the point where you can see the outlines of the major issues involved in the problem.  So I will leave it to you to hash out the details and to answer any further objections, that might come to you, yourselves.

----
/Talk
³3summary³3*³2tscreate³2981080868³2keepts³2982096677³2id³21019³2host³2cobrand.bomis.com³2revision³25³1username³2LarrySanger³2name³2text_default³2version³21³2ts³2982096677³2ip³2209.66.79.109³2data³2text³3<the following is a portion (partly edited) of LarrysText, wikification is encouraged>

The so-called <i>argument</i> <i>from</i> <i>evil</i> has, as its conclusion, "God does not exist."  This is also called the <i>problem</i> <i>of</i> <i>evil</i>.

Much ink has been spilled over the questions regarding rationality of <i>theism</i> (see FaithAndRationality)--about whether arguments are needed in order to be rational in believing in God, for example.  But we could just as well talk about the <a>TheRationalityOfAtheism</i>.

But some atheistic philosophers insist that one <i>can</i> prove that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist.  You <i>can</i> prove a negative, they say: you <i>can</i> prove that something does not exist.  How?  You show that the very concept of a thing is contrary to known facts.  That’s how the argument from evil goes.  Very briefly, the argument from evil proceeds like this: if God did exist, then he would eliminate evil from the world; but we see evil all around us; therefore, God does not exist.  I am sure you have thought of this problem before.  Now let’s see if we can state it more rigorously, and what objections might be made against it.

Here is the argument, in a more detailed form:

1. If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving.

2. If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it.

3. If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient.

4. If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent.

5. If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving.

6. Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving.

7. But evil does exist in the world.

8. Thus (by premise 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving.

9. Therefore (by premises 1 and 8), God does not exist.  (That is, the God of Judeo-Christian religion, which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving, does not exist.)

Now let’s go back over the premises and see which ones we might criticize.  Remember that if you want to criticize an argument, then either you attack the premises, or you show that the premises do not entail the conclusion.  Now, the way I have formulated the argument from evil, the premises <i>do</i> entail the conclusion: this is a deductively valid argument.  That means that <i>if</i> the premises are all true, <i>then</i> the conclusion must be true.  But that’s not too impressive.  If I had wanted to, I <i>could</i> have formulated the ontological argument and the cosmological arguments as deductively valid arguments; I would then, if I wanted to criticize those arguments, simply attack the premises.  So if you are certain that the conclusion of a valid argument is wrong, one of the premises must be wrong.  You just have to say which one, and say <i>why</i> that one is wrong.

So that’s what we’re going to do here.  We’ll go over the different premises and see whether they can stand up to scrutiny.  Premise (1) just states some basic facts about the Judeo-Christian conception of God: "If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving."  Ordinary Christians certainly do not want to reject premise (1).  Other people might end up rejecting this premise, because they want to believe in a <i>different</i> sort of God.

How about premise (2)?  "If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it."  Why think this?  Well, evil has to have <i>some</i> explanation.  Why would a good God allow evil to exist in the world?  Maybe he doesn’t know about it; or maybe he <i>can’t</i> get rid of it; or maybe he doesn’t <i>want</i> to eliminate it.  But is there any <i>other</i> explanation?  Perhaps, but I don’t think so.  Just ask yourself this: suppose God <i>knew</i> about evil, he <i>could</i> eliminate all of it, and he <i>wanted</i> to eliminate all of it; could evil even <i>possibly</i> exist then?  Surely not.  If God <i>knew</i> about all the evil, and he <i>could</i> get rid of it, and he <i>desired</i> to get rid of it, then God <i>would</i> get rid of it.  But then we simply say: suppose that evil <i>does</i> exist.  In that case, either God doesn’t know about it, he can’t get rid of it, or he doesn’t want to get rid of it.  One of those options is open to us (or perhaps a combination of them).  That’s what premise (2) says.  So I don’t think we can criticize premise (2).

Now look at premise (3).  "If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient."  That seems perfectly true.  If there’s <i>anything</i> that God doesn’t know, then God isn’t omniscient; what it means to be omniscient is to know everything that there is to know.

Similar things can be said about premise (4).  "If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent."  That also seems incontrovertibly true.  If there is anything that God can’t do, anything that doesn’t involve a contradiction anyway, then God isn’t omnipotent.  It is sometimes held that to eliminate evil ''would'' result in a contradiction - that is, we live in the best of all possible worlds.  However, without a lot more justification this can be ignored for the time being.  If God were omnipotent then he could certainly eliminate evil.  So I think both premises (3) and (4) have to be accepted.

But now what about premise (5)?  "If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving."  This one is more doubtful.  In fact I am sure that a lot of you will want to raise objections to it.  Isn’t it at least <i>possible</i> that God is all-loving, but he still doesn’t want to eliminate evil?  Maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  Well, we’ll elaborate on this objection in a bit.  Just keep in mind that we are going to come back to it; so premise (5) is the first premise we’ve found which is really dubious.

Next consider premise (6).  "Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving."  This follows deductively from premises (2)-(5); the only way to reject premise (6) is to reject (2), (3), (4), or (5); and so if we end up deny premise (5), that will be enough to allow us to say that (6) is false.

What about premise (7)?  "But evil does exist in the world."  Some people deny this.  But how?  How could anyone possibly deny that evil exists in the world?

Some people say that evil is <i>merely</i> an <i>appearance</i>; it is <i>only</i> an illusion.  Nothing is <i>really</i> evil.  I suppose the idea is that if you get yourself into the right frame of mind, probably a rather fuzzy frame of mind, then evil seems powerless and inconsequential.  What really matters is goodness, happiness, love, or something like that; so evil doesn’t matter, and in a sense it doesn’t really exist.

I have to admit that I have a hard time taking that view seriously.  First of all, even if evil "doesn’t matter," that certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t <i>exist</i>.  Because plainly it <i>does</i> exist.  Hitler exterminated six million Jews; that wasn’t evil?  People suffer from debilitating diseases all around the world; that’s not an evil we all potentially face?  People are regularly killed by tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.  Those events aren’t really evil?  Their obvious hatefulness is illusory?  That seems ridiculous.  Unless you have some sophisticated way to explain <i>why</i> evil is merely illusory, this view can be safely rejected.  I seriously doubt you can solve the problem of evil by simply <i>denying</i> that evil exists.

Premise (8) reads: "Thus (by premises 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving."  This is a further inference from earlier premises, so the only way that we can reject <i>it</i> is by rejecting those earlier premises.

So after going over each premise of the argument from evil, we have found just <i>one</i> premise, namely (5), and ''perhaps'' also statement 4, that gives us substantial hope of escaping the conclusion.  As I said, maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  But how?  How could a God that is all-loving allow evil not only to exist, but to <i>flourish</i> in the world?  That is the project of giving a <i>theodicy</i>.  A theodicy is a theory about why God allows evil to exist in the world.  In other words, a theodicy contains speculations about God’s <i>actual</i> <i>purposes</i> in allowing evil to exist in the world.  And mind you, in order to be a <i>successful</i> theodicy, the purposes stated must be wholly consistent with the notion that God is all-loving.  So what is called for is an explanation of the purposes that a loving God might have in permitting evil to exist.  I think that when I put it this way, this is a topic you may have thought a fair amount about; maybe some of you already have views about it.

I should insert here that some people think that all they have to prove is that a loving God <i>can</i> <i>have</i> <i>some</i> <i>purpose</i> in permitting evil to exist.  These people <i>deny</i> that they have to <i>state</i> God’s purposes.  What would be the point of that?  God’s purposes are not our purposes; the nature of God is mysterious.  So if you are a mystic this view should be attractive to you.  All you have to do is to argue that a loving God <i>might</i> have some reason for allowing the existence of evil; you don’t have to state what the reason is.  I think this is an extremely popular view among Christians.  For two reasons, no doubt: first, it is extremely pious not to try to guess at God’s thoughts; and second, it gives us a justification for not making an actual attempt to explain evil, which promises to be a very difficult task indeed.

But let’s review a few actual attempts to explain evil.  The first is to point to the existence of free will.  God gave us free will; and so we are able to bring evil upon ourselves.  We are to blame for the evils which we inflict and suffer.  This is an unfortunate consequence of our status as free beings; but it is far better that we are free, and hence that we suffer evil, than it would be if we were merely unfree pawns in a perfect game that God played by himself.

This is very persuasive to many people.  But there is a very serious problem with it: very much of the evil that we suffer is not due, in any direct way, to any choices that human beings make.  When the Black Death rode in the late Middle Ages, and wiped out millions upon millions of Europeans, that certainly was not due to any act of any human being.  Or take any natural disaster at all: human beings do not cause, and cannot prevent, devastating earthquakes.  So we should distinguish between <i>moral</i> evil and <i>natural</i> evil, a distinction I’ve been blurring up until now.  Moral evil is any bad thing that humans are responsible for; natural evil is any bad thing, such as an earthquake or flood, that humans are not responsible for.  Human beings are to blame for moral evil; but they are not to blame for natural evil.

"Ah," you may say, "but we are.  Adam and Eve freely committed the Original Sin, of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we have been paying for that great sin ever since."  Now, I don’t want to get into any specific issues of Biblical exegesis and Church doctrine.  But suffice it to say that it would be harsh, to say the least, that <i>absolutely</i> <i>every</i> <i>member</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>human</i> <i>race</i> who came after Adam and Eve should have to pay, throughout their lives, with all manner of suffering, for that Original Sin of Adam and Eve.  I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that does not sound like something that a loving God would do.  There may be a way to explain how a loving God can permit evil; but I doubt that the best way to explain it is to say that we all <i>deserve</i> all the evil we get, because Adam and Eve committed the Original Sin.

So here’s another answer, a more plausible answer, I think.  A universe in which we are tested and improved by having to face evils, is far better than a universe in which we might complacently live in blissful ignorance of evil.  The souls who will inhabit heaven will be far better and stronger if they live in a world beset with all sorts of evils.  Evil improves us.  And so God has allowed Satan to come to the power that he now has.  Satan tempts us and if we resist, we are better for it.  Satan also tests our will and resolve with all sorts of natural evils, earthquakes, floods, and whatnot; and if we pass the test we are better for it.

Now if I wanted to, I could bring a lot of objections to this.  Surely the absolute <i>horrors</i> that humanity has faced, especially in the twentieth century, are unnecessary to improve our moral mettle.  I could, if I wanted to, insist on such objections at length.  But I think we have come to the point where you can see the outlines of the major issues involved in the problem.  So I will leave it to you to hash out the details and to answer any further objections, that might come to you, yourselves.

----
/Talk
³3minor³31³3newauthor³31³3summary³3*³2tscreate³2981080868³2keepts³2982097102³2id³21001³2host³2cobrand.bomis.com³2revision³26³1username³2LarrySanger³2name³2text_default³2version³21³2ts³2982097102³2ip³2209.66.79.109³2data³2newauthor³30³3minor³31³3text³3<the following is a portion (partly edited) of LarrysText, wikification is encouraged>

The so-called <i>argument</i> <i>from</i> <i>evil</i> has, as its conclusion, "God does not exist."  This is also called the <i>problem</i> <i>of</i> <i>evil</i>.

Much ink has been spilled over the questions regarding rationality of <i>theism</i> (see FaithAndRationality)--about whether arguments are needed in order to be rational in believing in God, for example.  But we could just as well question the <a>TheRationalityOfAtheism</i>.

In response to these questions, some atheistic philosophers insist that one <i>can</i> prove that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist.  One <i>can</i> prove a negative, they say, i.e., one <i>can</i> prove that something does not exist.  One show that the very concept of a thing is contrary to known facts.  That is how the argument from evil proceeds: if God did exist, then he would eliminate evil from the world; but we see evil all around us; therefore, God does not exist.

Here is the argument, in a more detailed form:

#If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving.
#If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it.
#If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient.
#If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent.
#If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving.
#Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving.
#But evil does exist in the world.
#Thus (by premise 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving.
#Therefore (by premises 1 and 8), God does not exist.  (That is, the God of Judeo-Christian religion, which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving, does not exist.)

Now let’s go back over the premises and see which ones we might criticize.  Remember that if you want to criticize an argument, then either you attack the premises, or you show that the premises do not entail the conclusion.  Now, the way I have formulated the argument from evil, the premises <i>do</i> entail the conclusion: this is a deductively valid argument.  That means that <i>if</i> the premises are all true, <i>then</i> the conclusion must be true.  But that’s not too impressive.  If I had wanted to, I <i>could</i> have formulated the ontological argument and the cosmological arguments as deductively valid arguments; I would then, if I wanted to criticize those arguments, simply attack the premises.  So if you are certain that the conclusion of a valid argument is wrong, one of the premises must be wrong.  You just have to say which one, and say <i>why</i> that one is wrong.

So that’s what we’re going to do here.  We’ll go over the different premises and see whether they can stand up to scrutiny.  Premise (1) just states some basic facts about the Judeo-Christian conception of God: "If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving."  Ordinary Christians certainly do not want to reject premise (1).  Other people might end up rejecting this premise, because they want to believe in a <i>different</i> sort of God.

How about premise (2)?  "If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it."  Why think this?  Well, evil has to have <i>some</i> explanation.  Why would a good God allow evil to exist in the world?  Maybe he doesn’t know about it; or maybe he <i>can’t</i> get rid of it; or maybe he doesn’t <i>want</i> to eliminate it.  But is there any <i>other</i> explanation?  Perhaps, but I don’t think so.  Just ask yourself this: suppose God <i>knew</i> about evil, he <i>could</i> eliminate all of it, and he <i>wanted</i> to eliminate all of it; could evil even <i>possibly</i> exist then?  Surely not.  If God <i>knew</i> about all the evil, and he <i>could</i> get rid of it, and he <i>desired</i> to get rid of it, then God <i>would</i> get rid of it.  But then we simply say: suppose that evil <i>does</i> exist.  In that case, either God doesn’t know about it, he can’t get rid of it, or he doesn’t want to get rid of it.  One of those options is open to us (or perhaps a combination of them).  That’s what premise (2) says.  So I don’t think we can criticize premise (2).

Now look at premise (3).  "If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient."  That seems perfectly true.  If there’s <i>anything</i> that God doesn’t know, then God isn’t omniscient; what it means to be omniscient is to know everything that there is to know.

Similar things can be said about premise (4).  "If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent."  That also seems incontrovertibly true.  If there is anything that God can’t do, anything that doesn’t involve a contradiction anyway, then God isn’t omnipotent.  It is sometimes held that to eliminate evil ''would'' result in a contradiction - that is, we live in the best of all possible worlds.  However, without a lot more justification this can be ignored for the time being.  If God were omnipotent then he could certainly eliminate evil.  So I think both premises (3) and (4) have to be accepted.

But now what about premise (5)?  "If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving."  This one is more doubtful.  In fact I am sure that a lot of you will want to raise objections to it.  Isn’t it at least <i>possible</i> that God is all-loving, but he still doesn’t want to eliminate evil?  Maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  Well, we’ll elaborate on this objection in a bit.  Just keep in mind that we are going to come back to it; so premise (5) is the first premise we’ve found which is really dubious.

Next consider premise (6).  "Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving."  This follows deductively from premises (2)-(5); the only way to reject premise (6) is to reject (2), (3), (4), or (5); and so if we end up deny premise (5), that will be enough to allow us to say that (6) is false.

What about premise (7)?  "But evil does exist in the world."  Some people deny this.  But how?  How could anyone possibly deny that evil exists in the world?

Some people say that evil is <i>merely</i> an <i>appearance</i>; it is <i>only</i> an illusion.  Nothing is <i>really</i> evil.  I suppose the idea is that if you get yourself into the right frame of mind, probably a rather fuzzy frame of mind, then evil seems powerless and inconsequential.  What really matters is goodness, happiness, love, or something like that; so evil doesn’t matter, and in a sense it doesn’t really exist.

I have to admit that I have a hard time taking that view seriously.  First of all, even if evil "doesn’t matter," that certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t <i>exist</i>.  Because plainly it <i>does</i> exist.  Hitler exterminated six million Jews; that wasn’t evil?  People suffer from debilitating diseases all around the world; that’s not an evil we all potentially face?  People are regularly killed by tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.  Those events aren’t really evil?  Their obvious hatefulness is illusory?  That seems ridiculous.  Unless you have some sophisticated way to explain <i>why</i> evil is merely illusory, this view can be safely rejected.  I seriously doubt you can solve the problem of evil by simply <i>denying</i> that evil exists.

Premise (8) reads: "Thus (by premises 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving."  This is a further inference from earlier premises, so the only way that we can reject <i>it</i> is by rejecting those earlier premises.

So after going over each premise of the argument from evil, we have found just <i>one</i> premise, namely (5), and ''perhaps'' also statement 4, that gives us substantial hope of escaping the conclusion.  As I said, maybe it’s perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  But how?  How could a God that is all-loving allow evil not only to exist, but to <i>flourish</i> in the world?  That is the project of giving a <i>theodicy</i>.  A theodicy is a theory about why God allows evil to exist in the world.  In other words, a theodicy contains speculations about God’s <i>actual</i> <i>purposes</i> in allowing evil to exist in the world.  And mind you, in order to be a <i>successful</i> theodicy, the purposes stated must be wholly consistent with the notion that God is all-loving.  So what is called for is an explanation of the purposes that a loving God might have in permitting evil to exist.  I think that when I put it this way, this is a topic you may have thought a fair amount about; maybe some of you already have views about it.

I should insert here that some people think that all they have to prove is that a loving God <i>can</i> <i>have</i> <i>some</i> <i>purpose</i> in permitting evil to exist.  These people <i>deny</i> that they have to <i>state</i> God’s purposes.  What would be the point of that?  God’s purposes are not our purposes; the nature of God is mysterious.  So if you are a mystic this view should be attractive to you.  All you have to do is to argue that a loving God <i>might</i> have some reason for allowing the existence of evil; you don’t have to state what the reason is.  I think this is an extremely popular view among Christians.  For two reasons, no doubt: first, it is extremely pious not to try to guess at God’s thoughts; and second, it gives us a justification for not making an actual attempt to explain evil, which promises to be a very difficult task indeed.

But let’s review a few actual attempts to explain evil.  The first is to point to the existence of free will.  God gave us free will; and so we are able to bring evil upon ourselves.  We are to blame for the evils which we inflict and suffer.  This is an unfortunate consequence of our status as free beings; but it is far better that we are free, and hence that we suffer evil, than it would be if we were merely unfree pawns in a perfect game that God played by himself.

This is very persuasive to many people.  But there is a very serious problem with it: very much of the evil that we suffer is not due, in any direct way, to any choices that human beings make.  When the Black Death rode in the late Middle Ages, and wiped out millions upon millions of Europeans, that certainly was not due to any act of any human being.  Or take any natural disaster at all: human beings do not cause, and cannot prevent, devastating earthquakes.  So we should distinguish between <i>moral</i> evil and <i>natural</i> evil, a distinction I’ve been blurring up until now.  Moral evil is any bad thing that humans are responsible for; natural evil is any bad thing, such as an earthquake or flood, that humans are not responsible for.  Human beings are to blame for moral evil; but they are not to blame for natural evil.

"Ah," you may say, "but we are.  Adam and Eve freely committed the Original Sin, of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we have been paying for that great sin ever since."  Now, I don’t want to get into any specific issues of Biblical exegesis and Church doctrine.  But suffice it to say that it would be harsh, to say the least, that <i>absolutely</i> <i>every</i> <i>member</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>human</i> <i>race</i> who came after Adam and Eve should have to pay, throughout their lives, with all manner of suffering, for that Original Sin of Adam and Eve.  I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that does not sound like something that a loving God would do.  There may be a way to explain how a loving God can permit evil; but I doubt that the best way to explain it is to say that we all <i>deserve</i> all the evil we get, because Adam and Eve committed the Original Sin.

So here’s another answer, a more plausible answer, I think.  A universe in which we are tested and improved by having to face evils, is far better than a universe in which we might complacently live in blissful ignorance of evil.  The souls who will inhabit heaven will be far better and stronger if they live in a world beset with all sorts of evils.  Evil improves us.  And so God has allowed Satan to come to the power that he now has.  Satan tempts us and if we resist, we are better for it.  Satan also tests our will and resolve with all sorts of natural evils, earthquakes, floods, and whatnot; and if we pass the test we are better for it.

Now if I wanted to, I could bring a lot of objections to this.  Surely the absolute <i>horrors</i> that humanity has faced, especially in the twentieth century, are unnecessary to improve our moral mettle.  I could, if I wanted to, insist on such objections at length.  But I think we have come to the point where you can see the outlines of the major issues involved in the problem.  So I will leave it to you to hash out the details and to answer any further objections, that might come to you, yourselves.

----
/Talk
³3summary³3*³2tscreate³2981080868³2keepts³2982098062³2id³21001³2host³2cobrand.bomis.com³2revision³27³1username³2LarrySanger³2name³2text_default³2version³21³2ts³2982098062³2ip³2209.66.79.109³2data³2text³3<the following is a portion (partly edited) of LarrysText, wikification is encouraged>

The so-called <i>argument</i> <i>from</i> <i>evil</i> has, as its conclusion, "GoD does not exist."  This is also called the <i>problem</i> <i>of</i> <i>evil</i>.

Much ink has been spilled over the questions regarding rationality of <i>theism</i> (see FaithAndRationality)--about whether arguments are needed in order to be rational in believing in God, for example.  But we could just as well question the <a>TheRationalityOfAtheism</i>.

In response to these questions, some atheistic philosophers insist that one <i>can</i> prove that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim GoD does not exist.  One <i>can</i> prove a negative, they say, i.e., one <i>can</i> prove that something does not exist.  One show that the very concept of a thing is contrary to known facts.  That is how the argument from evil proceeds: if God did exist, then he would eliminate evil from the world; but we see evil all around us; therefore, God does not exist.

Here is the argument, in a more detailed form:

#If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving.
#If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it.
#If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient.
#If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent.
#If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving.
#Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving.
#But evil does exist in the world.
#Thus (by premise 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving.
#Therefore (by premises 1 and 8), God does not exist.  (That is, the God of Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions, which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving, does not exist.)

Consider now the premises in turn.

Premise (1) simply states some basic facts about the conception of God under consideration: "If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving."  Ordinary Christians, for example, certainly do not want to reject premise (1).  Other people might end up rejecting this premise, because they want to believe in a <i>different</i> sort of GoD.

Consider premise (2): "If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it."  Why think this?  Simply put, for a traditional theist, evil has to have <i>some</i> explanation.  Why would a good God allow evil to exist in the world?  Maybe he does not know about it; or maybe he <i>can’t</i> get rid of it; or maybe he does not <i>want</i> to eliminate it.  But is there any <i>other</i> explanation?  Perhaps; perhaps not.  Suppose God <i>knew</i> about evil, he <i>could</i> eliminate all of it, and he <i>wanted</i> to eliminate all of it; could evil even <i>possibly</i> exist then?  Surely not.  If God <i>knew</i> about all the evil, and he <i>could</i> get rid of it, and he <i>desired</i> to get rid of it, then God <i>would</i> get rid of it.  But then we simply say: suppose that evil <i>does</i> exist.  In that case, either God does not know about it, he cannot get rid of it, or he does not want to get rid of it.  One of those options is open to us (or perhaps a combination of them).  That is what premise (2) says.

Now examine premise (3).  "If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient."  That seems perfectly true.  If there is <i>anything</i> that God does not know, then God is not omniscient; what it means to be omniscient is to know everything that there is to know.

Similar things can be said about premise (4).  "If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent."  That also seems incontrovertibly true.  If there is anything that God cannot do--anything that does not involve a contradiction, anyway--then God is not omnipotent.  It is sometimes held that to eliminate evil ''would'' result in a contradiction; that is, we live in the BestOfAllPossibleWorlds (a view made famous by GottfriedLeibniz).  But let us set this view aside for the time being.  If God were omnipotent then, it seems, he could eliminate evil.

So both premises (3) and (4) seem unobjectionable.

Next consider premise (5), which is perhaps more interesting.  "If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving."  This premise seems more doubtful.  In fact I am sure that a lot of you will want to raise objections to it.  Is it not at least <i>possible</i> that God is all-loving, but he still does not want to eliminate the pain and suffering in the world?  Maybe it is perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  We will elaborate this point in a bit.  Just keep in mind that we are going to come back to it; so premise (5) is the first premise we have found that is possibly dubious.

Premise (6) follows deductively from premises (2)-(5); the only way to reject premise (6) is to reject (2), (3), (4), or (5).

Premise (7) is: "But evil does exist in the world."  Some people deny this.  Some people say that evil is <i>merely</i> an <i>appearance</i>; it is <i>only</i> an illusion.  Nothing is <i>really</i> evil.  In a certain frame of mind, evil might seem powerless and inconsequential.  What really matters is goodness, happiness, love, or something like that; so evil does not matter, and in a sense it does not really exist.

It is difficult for most people to take this view seriously.  First of all, even if evil "doesn not really matter," it nevertheless plainly <i>exists</i>.  Hitler exterminated six million Jews; that was surely evil.  People suffer from debilitating diseases all around the world; that too is surely an evil (a so-called "natural evil"; see below) we all potentially face.  People are regularly killed by tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.  Those events are awful evils.  It sounds extremely implausible, to most people, to say that their obvious hatefulness or badness is illusory.  Unless one has some sophisticated way to explain <i>why</i> evil is merely illusory, this view can be safely rejected.

Premise (8) reads: "Thus (by premises 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving."  This is a further inference from earlier premises, so the only way that we can reject <i>it</i> is by rejecting those earlier premises.

After going over each premise of the argument from evil, we have found <i>one</i> premise, namely (5), and ''perhaps'' also premise (4), that gives us substantial hope of escaping the conclusion.  Again: maybe it is perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.

But how?  How could a God that is all-loving allow evil not only to exist, but to <i>flourish</i> in the world?  That is the project of giving a <i>TheoDicy</i>.

I should insert here that some people think that all they have to prove is that a loving God <i>can</i> <i>have</i> <i>some</i> <i>purpose</i> in permitting evil to exist.  These people <i>deny</i> that they have to <i>state</i> God’s purposes.  What would be the point of that?  God’s purposes are not our purposes; the nature of God is mysterious.  So if you are a mystic this view should be attractive to you.  All you have to do is to argue that a loving God <i>might</i> have some reason for allowing the existence of evil; you don’t have to state what the reason is.  I think this is an extremely popular view among Christians.  For two reasons, no doubt: first, it is extremely pious not to try to guess at God’s thoughts; and second, it gives us a justification for not making an actual attempt to explain evil, which promises to be a very difficult task indeed.

But let’s review a few actual attempts to explain evil.  The first is to point to the existence of free will.  God gave us free will; and so we are able to bring evil upon ourselves.  We are to blame for the evils which we inflict and suffer.  This is an unfortunate consequence of our status as free beings; but it is far better that we are free, and hence that we suffer evil, than it would be if we were merely unfree pawns in a perfect game that God played by himself.

This is very persuasive to many people.  But there is a very serious problem with it: very much of the evil that we suffer is not due, in any direct way, to any choices that human beings make.  When the Black Death rode in the late Middle Ages, and wiped out millions upon millions of Europeans, that certainly was not due to any act of any human being.  Or take any natural disaster at all: human beings do not cause, and cannot prevent, devastating earthquakes.  So we should distinguish between <i>moral</i> evil and <i>natural</i> evil, a distinction I’ve been blurring up until now.  Moral evil is any bad thing that humans are responsible for; natural evil is any bad thing, such as an earthquake or flood, that humans are not responsible for.  Human beings are to blame for moral evil; but they are not to blame for natural evil.

"Ah," you may say, "but we are.  Adam and Eve freely committed the Original Sin, of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we have been paying for that great sin ever since."  Now, I don’t want to get into any specific issues of Biblical exegesis and Church doctrine.  But suffice it to say that it would be harsh, to say the least, that <i>absolutely</i> <i>every</i> <i>member</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>human</i> <i>race</i> who came after Adam and Eve should have to pay, throughout their lives, with all manner of suffering, for that Original Sin of Adam and Eve.  I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that does not sound like something that a loving God would do.  There may be a way to explain how a loving God can permit evil; but I doubt that the best way to explain it is to say that we all <i>deserve</i> all the evil we get, because Adam and Eve committed the Original Sin.

So here’s another answer, a more plausible answer, I think.  A universe in which we are tested and improved by having to face evils, is far better than a universe in which we might complacently live in blissful ignorance of evil.  The souls who will inhabit heaven will be far better and stronger if they live in a world beset with all sorts of evils.  Evil improves us.  And so God has allowed Satan to come to the power that he now has.  Satan tempts us and if we resist, we are better for it.  Satan also tests our will and resolve with all sorts of natural evils, earthquakes, floods, and whatnot; and if we pass the test we are better for it.

Now if I wanted to, I could bring a lot of objections to this.  Surely the absolute <i>horrors</i> that humanity has faced, especially in the twentieth century, are unnecessary to improve our moral mettle.  I could, if I wanted to, insist on such objections at length.  But I think we have come to the point where you can see the outlines of the major issues involved in the problem.  So I will leave it to you to hash out the details and to answer any further objections, that might come to you, yourselves.

----
/Talk
³3minor³31³3newauthor³30³3summary³3*³2tscreate³2981080868³2keepts³2982099061³2id³21001³2host³2cobrand.bomis.com³2revision³28³1username³2LarrySanger³2name³2text_default³2version³21³2ts³2982099061³2ip³2209.66.79.109³2data³2newauthor³30³3minor³30³3text³3<the following is a portion (partly edited) of LarrysText, wikification is encouraged>

The so-called <i>argument</i> <i>from</i> <i>evil</i> has, as its conclusion, "GoD does not exist."  This is also called the <i>problem</i> <i>of</i> <i>evil</i>.

Much ink has been spilled over the questions regarding rationality of <i>theism</i> (see FaithAndRationality)--about whether arguments are needed in order to be rational in believing in God, for example.  But we could just as well question the <a>TheRationalityOfAtheism</i>.

In response to these questions, some atheistic philosophers insist that one <i>can</i> prove that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim GoD does not exist.  One <i>can</i> prove a negative, they say, i.e., one <i>can</i> prove that something does not exist.  One show that the very concept of a thing is contrary to known facts.  That is how the argument from evil proceeds: if God did exist, then he would eliminate evil from the world; but we see evil all around us; therefore, God does not exist.

Here is the argument, in a more detailed form:

#If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving.
#If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it.
#If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient.
#If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent.
#If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving.
#Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving.
#But evil does exist in the world.
#Thus (by premise 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving.
#Therefore (by premises 1 and 8), God does not exist.  (That is, the God of Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions, which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving, does not exist.)

Consider now the premises in turn.

Premise (1) simply states some basic facts about the conception of God under consideration: "If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving."  Ordinary Christians, for example, certainly do not want to reject premise (1).  Other people might end up rejecting this premise, because they want to believe in a <i>different</i> sort of GoD.

Consider premise (2): "If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it."  Why think this?  Simply put, for a traditional theist, evil has to have <i>some</i> explanation.  Why would a good God allow evil to exist in the world?  Maybe he does not know about it; or maybe he <i>can’t</i> get rid of it; or maybe he does not <i>want</i> to eliminate it.  But is there any <i>other</i> explanation?  Perhaps; perhaps not.  Suppose God <i>knew</i> about evil, he <i>could</i> eliminate all of it, and he <i>wanted</i> to eliminate all of it; could evil even <i>possibly</i> exist then?  Surely not.  If God <i>knew</i> about all the evil, and he <i>could</i> get rid of it, and he <i>desired</i> to get rid of it, then God <i>would</i> get rid of it.  But then we simply say: suppose that evil <i>does</i> exist.  In that case, either God does not know about it, he cannot get rid of it, or he does not want to get rid of it.  One of those options is open to us (or perhaps a combination of them).  That is what premise (2) says.

Now examine premise (3).  "If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient."  That seems perfectly true.  If there is <i>anything</i> that God does not know, then God is not omniscient; what it means to be omniscient is to know everything that there is to know.

Similar things can be said about premise (4).  "If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent."  That also seems incontrovertibly true.  If there is anything that God cannot do--anything that does not involve a contradiction, anyway--then God is not omnipotent.  It is sometimes held that to eliminate evil ''would'' result in a contradiction; that is, we live in the BestOfAllPossibleWorlds (a view made famous by GottfriedLeibniz).  But let us set this view aside for the time being.  If God were omnipotent then, it seems, he could eliminate evil.

So both premises (3) and (4) seem unobjectionable.

Next consider premise (5), which is perhaps more interesting.  "If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving."  This premise seems more doubtful.  In fact I am sure that a lot of you will want to raise objections to it.  Is it not at least <i>possible</i> that God is all-loving, but he still does not want to eliminate the pain and suffering in the world?  Maybe it is perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  We will elaborate this point in a bit.  Just keep in mind that we are going to come back to it; so premise (5) is the first premise we have found that is possibly dubious.

Premise (6) follows deductively from premises (2)-(5); the only way to reject premise (6) is to reject (2), (3), (4), or (5).

Premise (7) is: "But evil does exist in the world."  Some people deny this.  Some people say that evil is <i>merely</i> an <i>appearance</i>; it is <i>only</i> an illusion.  Nothing is <i>really</i> evil.  In a certain frame of mind, evil might seem powerless and inconsequential.  What really matters is goodness, happiness, love, or something like that; so evil does not matter, and in a sense it does not really exist.

It is difficult for most people to take this view seriously.  First of all, even if evil "doesn not really matter," it nevertheless plainly <i>exists</i>.  Hitler exterminated six million Jews; that was surely evil.  People suffer from debilitating diseases all around the world; that too is surely an evil (a so-called "natural evil"; see below) we all potentially face.  People are regularly killed by tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.  Those events are awful evils.  It sounds extremely implausible, to most people, to say that their obvious hatefulness or badness is illusory.  Unless one has some sophisticated way to explain <i>why</i> evil is merely illusory, this view can be safely rejected.

Premise (8) reads: "Thus (by premises 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving."  This is a further inference from earlier premises, so the only way that we can reject <i>it</i> is by rejecting those earlier premises.

After going over each premise of the argument from evil, we have found <i>one</i> premise, namely (5), and ''perhaps'' also premise (4), that gives us substantial hope of escaping the conclusion.  Again: maybe it is perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.

But how?  How could a God that is all-loving allow evil not only to exist, but to <i>flourish</i> in the world?  That is the project of giving a <i>TheoDicy</i> (q.v.).

Some theologians--of a mystical bent--believe that all they have to prove is that a loving God <i>can</i> <i>have</i> <i>some</i> <i>purpose</i> in permitting evil to exist.  These people <i>deny</i> that they have to <i>state</i> God’s purposes.  There would be little point in doing that.  God’s purposes are not our purposes, they say; the nature of God is mysterious.  All one has to do is to argue that a loving God <i>might</i> have some reason for allowing the existence of evil; one need not state what the reason is.  This is an extremely popular view among ordinary theistic nontheologians, for two reasons, no doubt: first, it seems extremely pious not to try to guess at God’s thoughts (indeed, some religions enjoin us from doing so); and second, it gives us a reason for not making an actual attempt to explain evil, which promises to be a difficult task.

Let us review a few actual attempts to explain evil (without necessarily endorsing any of them).

We might explain evil by pointing to the existence of free will.  God gave us free will; so we are able to bring evil upon ourselves.  We are to blame for the evils which we inflict and suffer.  This is an unfortunate consequence of our status as free beings.  But it is far better that we are free, and hence that we suffer evil, than it would be if we were merely unfree pawns in a perfect game that God played by himself.

This is very persuasive to many people.  But there is a very serious problem with it: very much of the evil--the misfortune--that we suffer is not due, in any direct way, to any choices that human beings make.  When the Black Death rode in the late Middle Ages, and wiped out millions upon millions of Europeans, that certainly was not due to any act of any human being.  Or take any natural disaster at all: human beings do not cause, and cannot prevent, devastating earthquakes.  So we should distinguish between <i>moral</i> evil and <i>natural</i> evil, a distinction we have been blurring up until now.  Moral evil is any bad thing that for which humans ''are'' responsible; natural evil is any bad thing, such as an earthquake or flood, for which humans ''are not'' responsible.  Human beings are to blame for moral evil, but they are not to blame for natural evil.

"Ah," one may say, "but we are.  Adam and Eve freely committed the Original Sin, of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we have been paying for that great sin ever since."  We could get into specific issues of Biblical exegesis and Church doctrine at this point.  Suffice it for now to say that it would seem to be rather harsh, to say the least, that <i>absolutely</i> <i>every</i> <i>member</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>human</i> <i>race</i> who came after Adam and Eve should have to pay, throughout their lives, with all manner of suffering, for that Original Sin of Adam and Eve.  This, according to many, is something that a loving God would do.

Here is another answer.  A universe in which we are tested and improved by having to face evils is far better than a universe in which we might complacently live in blissful ignorance of evil.  The souls who will inhabit heaven will be far better and stronger if they live in a world beset with all sorts of evils.  Evil improves us.  So God has allowed Satan to come to the power that he now has.  Satan tempts us and if we resist, we are better for it.  Satan also tests our will and resolve with all sorts of natural evils, earthquakes, floods, and whatnot; if we pass the test we are better for it.

If one wanted to, one could bring a lot of objections to this.  Surely the absolute <i>horrors</i> that humanity has faced, especially in the twentieth century, are unnecessary to improve our moral mettle.  We could insist on such objections at length.  But then we are engaging the project of TheoDicy in detail, a topic for TheOlogy more than for PhilosophyOfReligion.
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³3summary³3* Finished wikifying for now³2tscreate³2981080868³2keepts³2982099109³2id³21001³2host³2cobrand.bomis.com³2revision³29³1username³2LarrySanger³2name³2text_default³2version³21³2ts³2982099109³2ip³2209.66.79.109³2data³2text³3<the following is a wikified portion of LarrysText; further development is encouraged; see also TheoDicy>

The so-called <i>argument</i> <i>from</i> <i>evil</i> has, as its conclusion, "GoD does not exist."  This is also called the <i>problem</i> <i>of</i> <i>evil</i>.

Much ink has been spilled over the questions regarding rationality of <i>theism</i> (see FaithAndRationality)--about whether arguments are needed in order to be rational in believing in God, for example.  But we could just as well question the <i>TheRationalityOfAtheism</i>.

In response to these questions, some atheistic philosophers insist that one <i>can</i> prove that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim GoD does not exist.  One <i>can</i> prove a negative, they say, i.e., one <i>can</i> prove that something does not exist.  One show that the very concept of a thing is contrary to known facts.  That is how the argument from evil proceeds: if God did exist, then he would eliminate evil from the world; but we see evil all around us; therefore, God does not exist.

Here is the argument, in a more detailed form:

#If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving.
#If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it.
#If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient.
#If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent.
#If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving.
#Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving.
#But evil does exist in the world.
#Thus (by premise 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving.
#Therefore (by premises 1 and 8), God does not exist.  (That is, the God of Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions, which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving, does not exist.)

Consider now the premises in turn.

Premise (1) simply states some basic facts about the conception of God under consideration: "If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving."  Ordinary Christians, for example, certainly do not want to reject premise (1).  Other people might end up rejecting this premise, because they want to believe in a <i>different</i> sort of GoD.

Consider premise (2): "If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it."  Why think this?  Simply put, for a traditional theist, evil has to have <i>some</i> explanation.  Why would a good God allow evil to exist in the world?  Maybe he does not know about it; or maybe he <i>can’t</i> get rid of it; or maybe he does not <i>want</i> to eliminate it.  But is there any <i>other</i> explanation?  Perhaps; perhaps not.  Suppose God <i>knew</i> about evil, he <i>could</i> eliminate all of it, and he <i>wanted</i> to eliminate all of it; could evil even <i>possibly</i> exist then?  Surely not.  If God <i>knew</i> about all the evil, and he <i>could</i> get rid of it, and he <i>desired</i> to get rid of it, then God <i>would</i> get rid of it.  But then we simply say: suppose that evil <i>does</i> exist.  In that case, either God does not know about it, he cannot get rid of it, or he does not want to get rid of it.  One of those options is open to us (or perhaps a combination of them).  That is what premise (2) says.

Now examine premise (3).  "If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient."  That seems perfectly true.  If there is <i>anything</i> that God does not know, then God is not omniscient; what it means to be omniscient is to know everything that there is to know.

Similar things can be said about premise (4).  "If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent."  That also seems incontrovertibly true.  If there is anything that God cannot do--anything that does not involve a contradiction, anyway--then God is not omnipotent.  It is sometimes held that to eliminate evil ''would'' result in a contradiction; that is, we live in the BestOfAllPossibleWorlds (a view made famous by GottfriedLeibniz).  But let us set this view aside for the time being.  If God were omnipotent then, it seems, he could eliminate evil.

So both premises (3) and (4) seem unobjectionable.

Next consider premise (5), which is perhaps more interesting.  "If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving."  This premise seems more doubtful.  In fact I am sure that a lot of you will want to raise objections to it.  Is it not at least <i>possible</i> that God is all-loving, but he still does not want to eliminate the pain and suffering in the world?  Maybe it is perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  We will elaborate this point in a bit.  Just keep in mind that we are going to come back to it; so premise (5) is the first premise we have found that is possibly dubious.

Premise (6) follows deductively from premises (2)-(5); the only way to reject premise (6) is to reject (2), (3), (4), or (5).

Premise (7) is: "But evil does exist in the world."  Some people deny this.  Some people say that evil is <i>merely</i> an <i>appearance</i>; it is <i>only</i> an illusion.  Nothing is <i>really</i> evil.  In a certain frame of mind, evil might seem powerless and inconsequential.  What really matters is goodness, happiness, love, or something like that; so evil does not matter, and in a sense it does not really exist.

It is difficult for most people to take this view seriously.  First of all, even if evil "doesn not really matter," it nevertheless plainly <i>exists</i>.  Hitler exterminated six million Jews; that was surely evil.  People suffer from debilitating diseases all around the world; that too is surely an evil (a so-called "natural evil"; see below) we all potentially face.  People are regularly killed by tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.  Those events are awful evils.  It sounds extremely implausible, to most people, to say that their obvious hatefulness or badness is illusory.  Unless one has some sophisticated way to explain <i>why</i> evil is merely illusory, this view can be safely rejected.

Premise (8) reads: "Thus (by premises 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving."  This is a further inference from earlier premises, so the only way that we can reject <i>it</i> is by rejecting those earlier premises.

After going over each premise of the argument from evil, we have found <i>one</i> premise, namely (5), and ''perhaps'' also premise (4), that gives us substantial hope of escaping the conclusion.  Again: maybe it is perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.

But how?  How could a God that is all-loving allow evil not only to exist, but to <i>flourish</i> in the world?  That is the project of giving a <i>TheoDicy</i> (q.v.).

Some theologians--of a mystical bent--believe that all they have to prove is that a loving God <i>can</i> <i>have</i> <i>some</i> <i>purpose</i> in permitting evil to exist.  These people <i>deny</i> that they have to <i>state</i> God’s purposes.  There would be little point in doing that.  God’s purposes are not our purposes, they say; the nature of God is mysterious.  All one has to do is to argue that a loving God <i>might</i> have some reason for allowing the existence of evil; one need not state what the reason is.  This is an extremely popular view among ordinary theistic nontheologians, for two reasons, no doubt: first, it seems extremely pious not to try to guess at God’s thoughts (indeed, some religions enjoin us from doing so); and second, it gives us a reason for not making an actual attempt to explain evil, which promises to be a difficult task.

Let us review a few actual attempts to explain evil (without necessarily endorsing any of them).

We might explain evil by pointing to the existence of free will.  God gave us free will; so we are able to bring evil upon ourselves.  We are to blame for the evils which we inflict and suffer.  This is an unfortunate consequence of our status as free beings.  But it is far better that we are free, and hence that we suffer evil, than it would be if we were merely unfree pawns in a perfect game that God played by himself.

This is very persuasive to many people.  But there is a very serious problem with it: very much of the evil--the misfortune--that we suffer is not due, in any direct way, to any choices that human beings make.  When the Black Death rode in the late Middle Ages, and wiped out millions upon millions of Europeans, that certainly was not due to any act of any human being.  Or take any natural disaster at all: human beings do not cause, and cannot prevent, devastating earthquakes.  So we should distinguish between <i>moral</i> evil and <i>natural</i> evil, a distinction we have been blurring up until now.  Moral evil is any bad thing that for which humans ''are'' responsible; natural evil is any bad thing, such as an earthquake or flood, for which humans ''are not'' responsible.  Human beings are to blame for moral evil, but they are not to blame for natural evil.

"Ah," one may say, "but we are.  Adam and Eve freely committed the Original Sin, of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we have been paying for that great sin ever since."  We could get into specific issues of Biblical exegesis and Church doctrine at this point.  Suffice it for now to say that it would seem to be rather harsh, to say the least, that <i>absolutely</i> <i>every</i> <i>member</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>human</i> <i>race</i> who came after Adam and Eve should have to pay, throughout their lives, with all manner of suffering, for that Original Sin of Adam and Eve.  This, according to many, is something that a loving God would do.

Here is another answer.  A universe in which we are tested and improved by having to face evils is far better than a universe in which we might complacently live in blissful ignorance of evil.  The souls who will inhabit heaven will be far better and stronger if they live in a world beset with all sorts of evils.  Evil improves us.  So God has allowed Satan to come to the power that he now has.  Satan tempts us and if we resist, we are better for it.  Satan also tests our will and resolve with all sorts of natural evils, earthquakes, floods, and whatnot; if we pass the test we are better for it.

If one wanted to, one could bring a lot of objections to this.  Surely the absolute <i>horrors</i> that humanity has faced, especially in the twentieth century, are unnecessary to improve our moral mettle.  We could insist on such objections at length.  But then we are engaging the project of TheoDicy in detail, a topic for TheOlogy more than for PhilosophyOfReligion.
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/Talk
³3minor³31³3newauthor³30³3summary³3*³2tscreate³2981080868³2keepts³2982132098³2id³21001³2host³2cobrand.bomis.com³2revision³210³1username³2LarrySanger³2name³2text_default³2version³21³2ts³2982132098³2ip³2209.66.79.109³2data³2newauthor³30³3minor³31³3text³3''<The following is a wikified portion of LarrysText; further development is encouraged; see also TheoDicy.>''

The so-called <i>argument</i> <i>from</i> <i>evil</i> has as its conclusion "GoD does not exist."  The argument expresses something called the <i>problem</i> <i>of</i> <i>evil</i>.  This entry will outline the argument and some responses to it.

Much ink has been spilled over the questions regarding rationality of <i>theism</i> (see FaithAndRationality)--about whether arguments are needed in order to be rational in believing in God, for example.  But we could just as well question the <i>TheRationalityOfAtheism</i>.

In response to these questions, some atheistic philosophers insist that one <i>can</i> prove that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim GoD does not exist.  One <i>can</i> prove a negative, they say, i.e., one <i>can</i> prove that something does not exist.  One show that the very concept of a thing is contrary to known facts.  That is how the argument from evil proceeds: if God did exist, then he would eliminate evil from the world; but we see evil all around us; therefore, God does not exist.

Here is the argument, in a more detailed form:

#If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving.
#If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it.
#If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient.
#If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent.
#If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving.
#Hence (by premises 2-5), if evil exists in the world, then either God is not omniscient, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not all-loving.
#But evil does exist in the world.
#Thus (by premise 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving.
#Therefore (by premises 1 and 8), God does not exist.  (That is, the God of Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions, which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving, does not exist.)

One might find The Problem of Evil in the fact that the premises of this argument seem compelling, but the conclusion is (to theists) unacceptable.  Consider now the premises in turn.

Premise (1) simply states some basic facts about the conception of God under consideration: "If God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving."  Ordinary Christians, for example, certainly do not want to reject premise (1).  Other people might end up rejecting this premise, because they want to believe in a <i>different</i> sort of GoD.

Consider premise (2): "If evil exists in the world, then either (1) God does not know about it, (2) God cannot eliminate it, or (3) God does not want to eliminate it."  Why think this?  Simply put, for a traditional theist, evil has to have <i>some</i> explanation.  Why would a good God allow evil to exist in the world?  Maybe he does not know about it; or maybe he <i>can’t</i> get rid of it; or maybe he does not <i>want</i> to eliminate it.  But is there any <i>other</i> explanation?  Perhaps; perhaps not.  Suppose God <i>knew</i> about evil, he <i>could</i> eliminate all of it, and he <i>wanted</i> to eliminate all of it; could evil even <i>possibly</i> exist then?  Surely not.  If God <i>knew</i> about all the evil, and he <i>could</i> get rid of it, and he <i>desired</i> to get rid of it, then God <i>would</i> get rid of it.  But then we simply say: suppose that evil <i>does</i> exist.  In that case, either God does not know about it, he cannot get rid of it, or he does not want to get rid of it.  One of those options is open to us (or perhaps a combination of them).  That is what premise (2) says.

Now examine premise (3).  "If God does not know about evil, then God is not omniscient."  That seems perfectly true.  If there is <i>anything</i> that God does not know, then God is not omniscient; what it means to be omniscient is to know everything that there is to know.

Similar things can be said about premise (4).  "If God cannot eliminate evil, then God is not omnipotent."  That also seems incontrovertibly true.  If there is anything that God cannot do--anything that does not involve a contradiction, anyway--then God is not omnipotent.  It is sometimes held that to eliminate evil ''would'' result in a contradiction; that is, we live in the BestOfAllPossibleWorlds (a view made famous by GottfriedLeibniz).  But let us set this view aside for the time being.  If God were omnipotent then, it seems, he could eliminate evil.

So both premises (3) and (4) seem unobjectionable.

Next consider premise (5), which is perhaps more interesting.  "If God does not want to eliminate evil, then God is not all-loving."  This premise seems more doubtful.  In fact I am sure that a lot of you will want to raise objections to it.  Is it not at least <i>possible</i> that God is all-loving, but he still does not want to eliminate the pain and suffering in the world?  Maybe it is perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.  We will elaborate this point in a bit.  Just keep in mind that we are going to come back to it; so premise (5) is the first premise we have found that is possibly dubious.

Premise (6) follows deductively from premises (2)-(5); the only way to reject premise (6) is to reject (2), (3), (4), or (5).

Premise (7) is: "But evil does exist in the world."  Some people deny this.  Some people say that evil is <i>merely</i> an <i>appearance</i>; it is <i>only</i> an illusion.  Nothing is <i>really</i> evil.  In a certain frame of mind, evil might seem powerless and inconsequential.  What really matters is goodness, happiness, love, or something like that; so evil does not matter, and in a sense it does not really exist.

It is difficult for most people to take this view seriously.  First of all, even if evil "doesn not really matter," it nevertheless plainly <i>exists</i>.  Hitler exterminated six million Jews; that was surely evil.  People suffer from debilitating diseases all around the world; that too is surely an evil (a so-called "natural evil"; see below) we all potentially face.  People are regularly killed by tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.  Those events are awful evils.  It sounds extremely implausible, to most people, to say that their obvious hatefulness or badness is illusory.  Unless one has some sophisticated way to explain <i>why</i> evil is merely illusory, this view can be safely rejected.

Premise (8) reads: "Thus (by premises 6 and 7) either God is not omniscient, or not omnipotent, or not all-loving."  This is a further inference from earlier premises, so the only way that we can reject <i>it</i> is by rejecting those earlier premises.

After going over each premise of the argument from evil, we have found <i>one</i> premise, namely (5), and ''perhaps'' also premise (4), that gives us substantial hope of escaping the conclusion.  Again: maybe it is perfectly consistent for an all-loving God to allow evil to exist in the world.

But how?  How could a God that is all-loving allow evil not only to exist, but to <i>flourish</i> in the world?  That is the project of giving a <i>TheoDicy</i> (q.v.).

Some theologians--of a mystical bent--believe that all they have to prove is that a loving God <i>can</i> <i>have</i> <i>some</i> <i>purpose</i> in permitting evil to exist.  These people <i>deny</i> that they have to <i>state</i> God’s purposes.  There would be little point in doing that.  God’s purposes are not our purposes, they say; the nature of God is mysterious.  All one has to do is to argue that a loving God <i>might</i> have some reason for allowing the existence of evil; one need not state what the reason is.  This is an extremely popular view among ordinary theistic nontheologians, for two reasons, no doubt: first, it seems extremely pious not to try to guess at God’s thoughts (indeed, some religions enjoin us from doing so); and second, it gives us a reason for not making an actual attempt to explain evil, which promises to be a difficult task.

Let us review a few actual attempts to explain evil (without necessarily endorsing any of them).

We might explain evil by pointing to the existence of free will.  God gave us free will; so we are able to bring evil upon ourselves.  We are to blame for the evils which we inflict and suffer.  This is an unfortunate consequence of our status as free beings.  But it is far better that we are free, and hence that we suffer evil, than it would be if we were merely unfree pawns in a perfect game that God played by himself.

This is very persuasive to many people.  But there is a very serious problem with it: very much of the evil--the misfortune--that we suffer is not due, in any direct way, to any choices that human beings make.  When the Black Death rode in the late Middle Ages, and wiped out millions upon millions of Europeans, that certainly was not due to any act of any human being.  Or take any natural disaster at all: human beings do not cause, and cannot prevent, devastating earthquakes.  So we should distinguish between <i>moral</i> evil and <i>natural</i> evil, a distinction we have been blurring up until now.  Moral evil is any bad thing that for which humans ''are'' responsible; natural evil is any bad thing, such as an earthquake or flood, for which humans ''are not'' responsible.  Human beings are to blame for moral evil, but they are not to blame for natural evil.

"Ah," one may say, "but we are.  Adam and Eve freely committed the Original Sin, of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we have been paying for that great sin ever since."  We could get into specific issues of Biblical exegesis and Church doctrine at this point.  Suffice it for now to say that it would seem to be rather harsh, to say the least, that <i>absolutely</i> <i>every</i> <i>member</i> <i>of</i> <i>the</i> <i>human</i> <i>race</i> who came after Adam and Eve should have to pay, throughout their lives, with all manner of suffering, for that Original Sin of Adam and Eve.  This, according to many, is something that a loving God would do.

Here is another answer.  A universe in which we are tested and improved by having to face evils is far better than a universe in which we might complacently live in blissful ignorance of evil.  The souls who will inhabit heaven will be far better and stronger if they live in a world beset with all sorts of evils.  Evil improves us.  So God has allowed Satan to come to the power that he now has.  Satan tempts us and if we resist, we are better for it.  Satan also tests our will and resolve with all sorts of natural evils, earthquakes, floods, and whatnot; if we pass the test we are better for it.

If one wanted to, one could bring a lot of objections to this.  Surely the absolute <i>horrors</i> that humanity has faced, especially in the twentieth century, are unnecessary to improve our moral mettle.  We could insist on such objections at length.  But then we are engaging the project of TheoDicy in detail, a topic for TheOlogy more than for PhilosophyOfReligion.
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/Talk
³3summary³3*³2tscreate³2981080868³2keepts³2982132118³2id³21001³2host³2cobrand.bomis.com³2revision³211