The Problem of Evil and the Problem of the Solutions to the Problem of Evil

By Scott Chastain

                The “problem of evil” arises when the traditional definition of God attempts to take into account the existence of evil which poses a contradiction to the nature of God thus defined.  In this essay I will delineate the problem of evil, David Hume’s discussion of why it’s especially a problem for the argument from design from “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,” Peter Van Inwagen’s solution as presented in “The Magnitude, Duration and Distribution of Evil: A Theodicy” as well as present and defend my own solution.

                The problem of evil, in general, is that certain attributes assigned to God conflict with the existence of evil in the universe.  For the sake of this discussion we will define evil as moral evil and natural evil.  Moral evil is suffering caused by human error while natural evil is suffering caused by events out of the hands of humanity such as hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, et al.  The premises of the problem are that God is omnipotent, God is perfectly benevolent, and evil exists.  “Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able?  then is he impotent.  Is he able, but not willing?  then he is malevolent.  Is he both able and willing?  whence then is evil?”^[1]

                Hume’s character Philo, whom I believe represents Hume himself, is adding the finishing touches to his argument against Cleanthes.  Cleanthes’ position is that we can determine attributes of God from our experience of the universe itself, or a posteriori.  Philo, and the devout Demea, both maintain that we cannot know anything of God through experience, but only through reason, a priori.  We join the trio as Philo and Demea introduce the problem of evil into the debate.

                Philo is claiming that the problem of evil isn‘t as relevant, as Descartes had demonstrated, if one is willing to consider God as unknowable in the empirical sense.  However if one should try to determine some fact of God’s nature a posteriori it is at the core of the matter.  If one takes the approach that God is knowable through the observation of the creation itself, then one must certainly have to answer for the evidentiary suffering and misery that are observable within creation.  Cleanthes therefore tries to find solutions to the problem of evil albeit unsuccessfully.   Cleanthes begins his refutation with the obvious attempt to erase premise three; that evil doesn’t exist.

                Cleanthes states that evil doesn’t really exist at all.  Cleanthes suggests that the good in the universe far outweighs the evil which of course doesn’t support his argument.  If even a small amount of evil exists then evil exists.  Philo explains this to our empiricist, but first he illustrates the imbalance between good and evil themselves.

                When something pleasurable occurs it is over quickly.  The most ecstatic rapture is over in an instant.  In contrast, explains Philo, when evil occurs it has a strong duration.  The worst pain, in fact, can persist for hours, days or even longer.  Thus Philo refutes this ludicrous claim rather succinctly.

                Cleanthes reloads his guns and takes another shot in the dark.  He is now proposing that a small amount of evil (that which exists) is necessary to ward off greater evils.  It is benevolent, he contends, to introduce a lesser evil to compensate for a greater horror.

                Philo doesn’t bat an eye.  Firstly, he goads Cleanthes by assuring him that he just made a mystical assertion as he cannot know the nature of the greater evil which doesn’t exist except a priori.  Philo brings back his “house” analogy to illustrate the difficulty of the “evil as a means to an end” argument.  If an architect built a house that was lacking in all refinements so that it provided the homeowner with the most unpleasant living conditions, we would consider that architect to be incompetent or malevolent.  The architect could argue that if you changed any of the original parts of the house then the house would be even less pleasant to live in.  However, a competent and concerned architect would rather build the best possible house he could create.  Like the house model, the argument that God who is omnipotent, cannot “alter” any part of the universe without creating an even worse situation is invalid.  God could have created a better world in the beginning.

                Philo then offers us his “four circumstances upon which evil depends”.  They are as follows:

1.             Pain and pleasure are both necessary for motivating a being into self-preservation.  However a better universe would only employ pleasure to this end removing the necessity of pain.

2.             Natural laws, which are in perfect accord with one another, make pain necessary.  God could exterminate these ills as they arise or at least exterminate the leading causes of such pains.

3.             The attributes by which all creatures can defend themselves against these ills are so evenly distributed that it forces the creatures to endure evil.  However if each creature were given an abundance of resources with which to combat evil they would experience a great reduction in suffering.

4.             The universe is riddled with imperfections, sometimes defections, and sometimes purposelessness.  These potholes in the structure of the cosmos produce unnecessary suffering.  It is as if the intelligence behind the design is either quite unfinished or has quit somewhere along the line.  A benevolent God would have ensured that such defects which produce unneeded suffering were remedied before he placed those creatures in that world.

                Philo briefly offers the Manichaean system as a solution.  Manichaean theology was formulated by Mani in the third century C.E. in Iran.  He proposed that there was a god of light, understanding, and kindness and also a god of darkness, ignorance, and malevolence.  Philo concedes that the universe shows no scars of the cosmic battle a literal interpretation of Manichaean theology would produce.

                To add the coup de grace to this parley, Philo presents four hypotheses which would indicate the implications of the problem of evil and the cause of the universe.  They are as follows:

1.             The cause is perfectly good.

2.             The cause is perfectly malevolent.

3.             The cause is both good and malevolent.

4.             The cause is neither good nor malevolent.

                He discards options 1 and 2 due to the presence of both good and evil in the world.  He deduces the 3^rd is not a viable option due to the uniformity of the natural laws which govern the universe (rather than the imbalances which would be caused by the Manichaean struggle).  He concludes that the 4^th option is the ideal hypotheses to describe the creator.

                This affronts poor pious Demea who leaves the discourse abruptly and also leaves Cleanthes with no suitable refutation.  With Cleanthes’ platform in tatters, the dialogue ends.

                Enter Peter Van Inwagen.  Van Inwagen’s solution is that mankind is itself responsible for both moral and natural evil.  In essence, it isn’t God’s problem!

                To illustrate this he briefly lays out the biblical narrative of the creation of the world and the fall of man from paradise.  The first generation of humans (without defining precisely what that means) rejected God’s will.  This fall, or separation from God, wrestled the earth from God‘s control to mans.

                Mankind is not without all hope, however.  There was an atoning medium which God sent to allow us to rejoin him in paradise.  Jesus Christ.  The Atonement allows us to choose to remain in the presence of evil or to separate ourselves from evil and regain a state of purity through the Atonement.

                He deals with several problems that arise due to this solution and I will address two.  The first is the argument that God, being perfectly good, should only allow the smallest portion of evil necessary to exist.  The second is the argument that God should have simply restored mankind back to paradise.

                God should only allow the minimal amount of evil to occur; anything beyond that is malevolent.  Van Inwagen states that it isn’t so.  For example he suggest that a $20 fine would serve the same judicial purpose as $19.99 would but we would not scorn the judge for imposing the higher of the two fines. 

                God should have restored mankind back to its state of grace.  Van Inwagen argues that in order to do that God would have to remove their memory.  Mankind would not remember the fall (and the evil that he encountered as a result) and thus would be free to do it again and again.  In like fashion if God sheltered us from all evil as we make our wayward path through the world we would be puppets or automatons with no real free will.  Neither act would be considered benevolent.

                I will not dig deeper into his argument because I don’t feel I really have to.  His solution is rather simple to counter.  I will now pull out the thread upon which this fabrication is held together and the rest of his arguments that rely on that thread will unravel.

                To ensure we have really begun to pull this fabric apart let us look at two implications of his suggestion.  First, if God took a risk when he created mankind and imbued them with free will then God is not omniscient.  How can a being who knows the outcome perfectly of any action be taking a risk?  If a wormhole were to open up in space-time and somehow the postman walked through it and delivered me tomorrows paper, I would know what tomorrows winning lottery numbers would be.   Would I be taking a risk if I were to purchase a lottery ticket with the predestinated winning numbers?

                Second, if God is punishing the rest of mankind for actions not committed by them directly, but by their distant forefathers, God is not just.  It is unfair to make persons B-Z pay for the actions of person A.  This is where the Atonement comes in but that should have been presented to the original humans who fell and any who might have fallen in the meantime.

                Another problem that arises is that many have attempted to turn back to God (and given the vast amounts of people who have claimed to have done just that, it seems evident at least a percentage would have done so sincerely) yet they still continue to suffer.

                To illustrate my point, God could have created a protective shield around any person who had never chosen to turn from God by himself or herself.  I call it an “Eden Bubble” because it would essentially provide the person with a paradisiacal existence much like Van Inwagen’s first generation owned.  No harm would befall them (unless it was a free will choice to put themselves in harm’s way by turning from God) in the Eden Bubble.  The moment they turned from God the Eden Bubble would pop.  They would still witness the effects of others’ poor choices but would not feel the ill-effect that those who were guilty would feel.  Likewise, God could have sent an atoning agent to every generation of every culture to help those who wanted their Eden Bubble reformed to achieve that goal.

                Thus I believe Philo was quite correct.  We cannot detect God a posteriori and any attempt to solve the problem of evil will most likely fail.  Van Inwagen chose to approach the matter more as an issue of faith from a prescribed religious tradition.  We can see how even that attempt fails the test.

                I have a solution.  It isn’t a solution to the problem of evil though, as that as I have said, is beyond refutation (certainly by me at any rate!).  I call my solution the answer to the problem of the traditional definition of God in relation to the existence of evil.

                First, I propose that we redefine God as not omnipotent in the sense that God can do anything but instead that God has relative omnipotence.  This is the ability to do anything which can be done.  We should also consider God rather than as omniscient in the sense that God knows everything but instead as selectively omniscient.  This would indicate that God has the ability to know everything but, for whatever purposes God chooses, selects to not know certain things (such as the will of mankind).  This is almost a certain consideration if we attribute any sort of omnipotence to God.  Of course God could choose to “not know” things.  Finally, we will conclude our revised definition by stating that God is efficient.  Being very wise God will always do things as efficiently as possible (hence Philo’s observation that our anti-evil defense systems are spread out evenly throughout creation).

                Being that God is efficient, this is the most efficient universe which can exist.  The fact that evil occurs is part and parcel to that efficiency.  God created us with free will but keeps our future actions a surprise (again for whatever purpose suits him).  The purpose of this is to learn from our mistakes to grow as both individuals and as collectives.  The end purpose of this learning experience I will not discuss or speculate upon.  Considering that we can observe life evolving (improving through trial and error) and given the assumption that all of this was caused by God, we must assume that is what God wants to happen.  We can speculate that this also what we are supposed to be doing spiritually, mentally and emotionally.  Evolution of the soul.

                The first problem I would anticipate concerning my solution is that if God is benevolent, which my revised definition does not directly suggest, why couldn’t God educate us without the experience of evil?  Answer:  this is beyond God’s ability to do.  God cannot do things which are logically impossible.  For us to have free will and learn without experiencing distress, suffering, challenge and difficulty is impossible.  This would not be learning but experiencing amusements with nothing motivating us to improve and overcome.

                Consider a philosophy professor.  He could simply hand out essay assignments a few words long and give all papers an A automatically so he would not cause suffering by overloading his students with “unnecessary” work.  He could hand out tests with the answers already filled in.  Of course the students would probably not bother doing any reading or studying.  They would probably not bother with the class.  They would probably leave the classroom no better off than when they entered it.

                Another possible problem is the distribution of evil and affluence.  The wicked seem to prosper more than do the gentle.  I admit this problem is tough to solve.  I suppose I shall simply resort to the stand-by used by Hindus, Buddhists and even some Jews and Christians.  Reincarnation.  I am not positing that such a thing exists but it does answer the problem of distribution quite nicely.  If we continue to be born into new bodies (with different souls but the same essential spirit perhaps) we could experience a multitude of lifestyles.  We could confront the problems all these myriad walks of life encounter. 

                In any event Philo left us with a problem of evil that Cleanthes could not overcome.  Van Inwagen leaves us with a bigger problem than he set out to solve.  If my solution has additional problems which may be brought against it then we are going to have to dig deeper for resolution.  The conflict and mental agony over this issue will certainly not end with this essay.  Perhaps Van Inwagen was correct about one thing:  we do seem to provide ourselves with misery!