In this article I will evaluate the arguments for and against a good God allowing evil and suffering in a world which Christians claim is under divine control.
My aim in this essay is to show that the arguments against a good God allowing evil are not strong enough to show that belief in the omnipotent (barring the logically impossible), omniscient and wholly good God of the Bible is irrational or unreasonable. Therefore, my aim is to show how the existence of the Christian God is compatible with the actual amount and nature of the evil in this world. I will begin by examining the arguments against the permission of evil by God, examining what has often been called the 'logical' problem of evil and then turning to the 'evidential' problem of evil. The second part will constitute a response to the atheists' arguments and several postulations in favour of a good God allowing evil. I will conclude by evaluating the evidence on both sides and arguing that, although it seems as though no explanation of the amount of evil in this world has been put forward that appears satisfactory and complete to the atheist, this does not mean that there is no justification for the evil that exists in the world. One cannot conclude that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good God.
Firstly, then I will consider the logical problem of evil, which holds that it is irrational to believe in God because theism involves simultaneously holding contradictory beliefs. This dilemma can be presented as a series of propositions which appear to be inconsistent:
(1) God is omnipotent
(2) God is omniscient
(3) God is wholly good
(4) Evil exists
I shall be referring to this set of propositions (1) to (4) as set A.
Clearly the contradiction here is not an explicit or formal one. It is not possible to arrive at a proposition and its denial in set A. So the contradiction, if there is one, must be implicit and the atheist must provide additional propositions which are necessarily true and make set A formally inconsistent. Mackie suggests that 'a good omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely' which can be split up into two separate principles, both needing to be necessarily true to yield a formal contradiction of set A:
(i) A good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can
(ii) There are no nonlogical limits to what an omnipotent thing can do
The theist needs to deny the truth of one or more of these propositions in order to defeat Mackie's argument. Obviously it is unacceptable for a Christian to deny (1), (2), (3) or (ii), and so the only other options would be to deny (4) or (i). Given the fact of murders, road accidents, political scandals and earthquakes etc, it seems unacceptable to deny the reality of evil, as the Christian Scientists do. Therefore it is the first of Mackie's propositions, (i), that I would argue is not necessarily true. As Davis makes clear, all we have to do in order to defeat the logical problem of evil is to provide a statement which is possibly true, is consistent with (1) - (3) and entails (4). This would be enough to overthrow the charge of inconsistency. Davis puts forward a suggestion:
"All the evil that exists in the world is due to the choices of free moral agents whom God created, and no other world which God could have created would have a better balance of good over evil than the actual world will have."
This is obviously possibly true and therefore the logical problem of evil can be defeated.
The second main argument against the possibility that a good God allows evil is the claim that the amount and nature of the evil in the world constitutes overwhelming evidence against God, although it does not make belief in God irrational. The distinction is made between moral evil (being evil due to human actions, such as murder and jealousy) and natural, or physical, evil (being evil not originating from human actions, such as natural disasters and disease). Of course, the two very often overlap, such as in the case of lung cancer, which is a natural evil in as much as it is a disease, but is also at least partly caused by the human decision to smoke. It is also important to realise that it is not necessary to have one single explanation that covers all evils, and a defence of God will most probably combine a number of different explanations.
Having looked at the arguments against God that the fact of evil presents, I will now briefly consider what I take to be the four main responses, and hence the main arguments supporting the idea that a good God does allow evil:
(1) Firstly it is argued that evil is a justified punishment by God. It is obvious that not all evil can be accounted for in this way because punishment implies the existence of evil, and also much evil does not seem to be distributed according to desert. However, it certainly seems plausible that some evil may be a punishment, and indeed the Bible alludes to this.
(2) Secondly, Hick argues that natural evil may be justified because God has created the world with fixed and general laws of nature which are essential to the spiritual development of human beings. It is argued that it is worthwhile bringing about this good, even if it means that through the natural operations of these laws, some evil will come about. Hick argues that by way of overcoming trials and difficulties we will come freely to a meaningful relationship with God. If Hick's soul-making theory is correct, then this world would seem to testify to the truth of God's existence. However, his view is not wholly adequate in dealing with the amount of evil in the world and also it relies on the truth of the doctrine of universalism because he has to assume that the soul-making process is going to work. However it is clear from the Bible that universalism is unacceptable Therefore it seems as though we must reject the soul-making theory, although Hick's explanation of evil being due to fixed laws of nature is more plausible if restricted to natural evil.
(3) St. Augustine and Plantinga maintain that natural evil is caused by the free will of the Devil, since we know from the Bible that angels have free will, and it was this that enabled the Devil to rebel against God. Again, this is a possible explanation of natural evil, and I will be discussing free-will theories below.
(4) The main, and in my opinion the best, argument against the problem of evil is that God was justified in allowing evil because the value of freedom itself and/or the goods that it achieves for us outweigh the evil in the world. I would argue that God created a world with no evil in it, and humans were given the capability of rational choice. Therefore, we are to be blamed for moral evil and not God, since the non-existence of evil was compatible with what God created. One of the most notable arguments against the free-will defence comes, perhaps unsurprisingly, from Mackie. He argues that there is a middle way between God creating automata who always act rightly, and free agents who sometimes do wrong. He holds that God could have created free agents who always do right. However I would argue that it was logically impossible for God to create a world containing significantly free beings but no evil. If we mean by a 'free' action one that is not externally compelled, then being free beings in relation to God contradicts with God making us so that we will necessarily act in a certain way. Whilst it is logically possible for a human to always perform morally right actions, it is not logically possible for God to ensure that all humans always perform morally admirable actions. Davis maintains that,
"There is a logical tension between an agent's being free vis-a-vis certain acts and the agent's somehow being influenced by God always to behave in a certain way regarding those acts."
To conclude, I hope that I have shown that the logical problem of evil can be effectively defeated and also that significant inroads can be made into the evidential problem of evil. I would argue that atheists go about the problem of evil the wrong way, asserting that God does not exist on the grounds that none of the efforts to explain how his existence is compatible with the existence of evil seem wholly satisfactory to them. Other considerations and supplementary evidence need to be taken into account to show that it is more probable that God exists than does not (for instance the evidence for the Resurrection) and I would argue that these are enough to outweigh the fact that maybe the justification for the existence or evil will never be fully explained by Christians. Given what I know about God, I know that there must be a valid explanation of evil (and therefore it is a foregone conclusion that evil is justified). An atheist only looks at part of the evidence - the fact of suffering. However, a Christian looks at all the evidence - the fact of suffering and the fact of Christ and any Christian will maintain that the fact of Christ is enough to tip the scales in God's favour.
© Anne Witton 2001. No part of this article may be copied without my permission.
To read a fuller version of this article, go to my university dissertation.
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