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Tuesday, October 14, 2014

The Problem of Evil and Suffering

If God existed, he would be all-powerful and morally perfect. An all-powerful and morally perfect being would not allow evil to exist. But we observe evil. Hence, God does not exist.

I often times here such statements by skeptics claiming that if God truly existed would not allow so much evil in this world. Isn't God powerful enough to end the evil of ISIS? Isn't God powerful enough and all-loving to just end the epidemic disease of Ebola?

I believe we can add many problems we face on a daily basis, we often question the existence of God, "Why Lord, if you are real, do you allow this... or that...?"

There are many ways to understand the phrase "the problem of evil." I understand this phrase as a label for a certain purely intellectual problem - as opposed to an emotional, spiritual, pastoral, or theological problem (and as opposed to a good many other possible categories of problem as well). The fact that there is much evil in the world (that is to say, the fact that many bad things happen) can be the basis for an argument for the nonexistence of God (that is, of an omnipotent and morally perfect God. But I take these qualifications to be redundant: I take the phrases "a less than omnipotent God" and "a God who sometimes does wrong" to be self-contradictory, like "round square" or "a perfectly transparent object that casts a shadow."

That God is omnipotent means that he can do anything - provided his doing it doesn't involve an intrinsic impossibility. (Thus, even an omnipotent being can't draw a round square. And God, although he is omnipotent, is unable to lie, for his lying is as much a intrinsic impossibility as a round square.) To say that God is morally perfect is to say that he never does anything morally wrong - that he could not possibly do anything morally wrong. If omnipotence and moral perfection are nonnegotiable components if the idea of God, this fact has the following two logical consequences.

(1) If the universe was made by an intelligent being, and if that being is less than omnipotent (and if there's no other being who is omnipotent), the atheists are right: God does not exist.

(2) If the universe was made by an omnipotent being, and if that being has done even one morally wrong thing (and if there isn't another omnipotent being, one who never does any anything morally wrong), the atheists are right: God does not exist. If, therefore, the Creator of the universe lacked either omnipotence or moral perfection and if he claimed to be God, he would be either an imposter (if he claimed to be omnipotent and morally perfect) or confused (if he admitted that he was less than omnipotent or less than morally perfect and still claimed to be God).

One premise of the simple version of the argument set above - that an all-powerful and morally perfect being would not allow evil to exist - might well be false if the all-powerful and wholly good being were ignorant, and not culpably ignorant, of the the existence of evil. But this is not a difficulty for the proponent of the simple argument, for God, if he exists, is omniscient. The proponent if the simple argument could, in fact, defend his premise by an appeal to far weaker these about the extent of God's knowledge than "God is omniscient." If the simple argument presents an effective prima facie case for the conclusion that there is no omnipotent and morally perfect being who is omniscient, it presents an equally effective prima facie case for the conclusion that there is no omnipotent and morally perfect being who has even as much knowledge of what goes on in the world as we human beings have. The full panoply of omniscience, so to speak, does not really enter into the initial stages of a presentation and discussion of an argument from evil. Omniscience, omniscience in the full sense of the word, will become important only when we come to examine responses to the argument from evil that involve free will.


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