The Problem of Evil
Yeah, I’d say there’s a problem…
I spent a serious amount of time invested in understanding the philosophy used throughout history attempting to solve this Problem of Evil. I’m not trained in formal philosophy — in fact I have very little formal training in classical argument, and even less in logic. This problem however, felt important to me — so I went to Google Scholar, found 23 academic papers on the topic, and sat down determined to get at least a layman’s understanding of what has already been developed and perhaps an understanding of why those arguments weren’t acceptable.
The first two papers were perfect. The arguments and logical reasoning felt brilliant. They didn’t work out but the collections went way back into the days of Thomas of Aquinas — about thirty philosophers between the two papers were explored, their techniques described… great stuff. I was fully entertained and mentally engaged. And then I found that one of my files was actually a college manual on philosophy, with the whole first part (six chapters) on the Problem of Evil… score! Or at least that was my first reaction.
This being an instructive manual, it began with a in-depth look at the problem itself — explaining what it was, the history of it, and then got into the set up of the problem. That part went like this:
In its simplest form the problem is this: God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false….
Hmmm…
…additional principles are that good is opposed to evil, in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can, and that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. From these it follows that a good omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely, and then the propositions that a good omnipotent thing exists, and that evil exists, are incompatible.
What?…
I should begin at this point by confessing that this was a serious question for me. I do a lot of writing and answering questions. I’m great at finding information and research. I also have a good handle of communicating in prose. This mission began because another writer that I’ve been chatting a little with told me about a comment he had, from a reader which once I read it, the tone came through very clearly distraut.
This all began after I read an article by Dan Foster entitled:
The Question About God That Christians Can’t Afford to Ignore
Why the problem of evil remains Christianity’s greatest intellectual challenge after two thousand years.
The question, he reports, comes to him from a comment left by a reader:
“You either have a god who sends child rapists to rape children or you have a god who simply watches it and says, ‘When you are done I’m going to punish you.’ But if I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That’s the difference between me and your god.”
That’s a sharp comment and a heavy question. The texture of it compeled me to attempt to discover an answer.
The other two papers didn’t spend much time with the Problem of Evil, its background or history. These were acedemic papers which assumed you understood that part — which I clearly didn’t — Because I don’t recognize this Being this book is proclaiming as God. Not one of those propositions are in-line with the God of Abraham, or Jesus, or any of the Christian text.
good is opposed to evil, in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can…?
First off, that is really close to suggesting that God is your cat who is in charge of hunting rats in your workshop.
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Second, has this guy even read the Bible? Has he at least thumbed through it? A good thing always eliminates evil — Have your read the story of Job? Have you heard of Hell? Because Hell is God’s next door neighbor. Jesus had Satan right in front of him, tempting him. At no point did Jesus smack Satan in the head. And God hasn’t destroyed Hell last I checked.
And when did God get Good? Have you read Exodus? Egypt? Pharaoh? Ringing any bells?
Moses goes to Pharaoh saying ‘let my people go’. Pharaoh says ‘Hey, I like you kid, but back off, and those are my people.’ And then they have a magic battle which is just the thing that makes great action scenes. Plagues, snakes, storms. Then God pulls the Passover move. He kills every first born child throughout the city. Thousands of children die over night. One of those kids is Pharaoh’s son.
This takes the wind out of Pharaoh. Devastates him. His own son, and thousands of children in his kingdom, slaughtered. He’s done. Whoever this I-AM is, it’s over. He tells Moses, leave. Take your Hebrews and get out of here. Pharaoh wants nothing from them. He wants to grieve. He needs to prepare his child for the tomb. Moses gathers the Hebrews and they head for the Red Sea.
… And then… God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh was done. He admitted defeat. But God decides, he’s not done. No. God decides that what this film needs is a dramatic, public, beat down. So he sends Pharaoh, against his will, after Moses. Makes him take his army. And of course, very publicly, drowns the lot of them in the sea. And God was right… it made a great movie.
Sound Good to you? Maybe it wasn’t evil — but that wasn’t Good, by any stretch of the imagination.
That isn’t even close to being a one-off occurrence. No. There are many places we can go and see dead children and abused people. How about Job?
Over a bet with Satan — who is just walking around the throne room when the host is gathered — a bet over how good of a follower Job is… God sends Satan down to Job’s place and over the course of several visits, kills his wife, all of his children, runs off his livestock with raiders, slaughters his field hands, gives Job boils, and disease, burns his house leaving Job sitting in the dirt of the garbage dump, scraping his puss boils with broken pottery.
God won the bet…He didn’t kill Satan either. No. Satan hangs out afterward for a while, and then goes back to the Earth to walk here and there and do this and that…
Is that Good? Satan did all the heavy lifting. And God did give Job a new wife and new children at the end. Some new livestock. Maybe it wasn’t evil — but it wasn’t Good.
And this crap about being Omnipotent… Remember when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, and figured out that they were naked, so when they heard God walking in the Garden, they hid?
“Where are you?” he called.
They were like ten feet away in the bushes. Does that sound omnipotent? The Bible doesn’t even have the word omnipotent between its covers. Old or New Testament. The closest is in Revelations, which uses the word Almighty. I mean, to your average human God is a really powerful guy — but really powerful is not omnipotent. And Revelations is a work of Fiction, in a popular form/genre. Daniel has two more examples of that kind of tale. And it certainly wasn’t written by John the Disciple — he was illiterate.
Like I said, I don’t recognize who you are talking about.
On top of all of this — let’s wipe all of that out, and reset to the Problem of Evil’s description and claim it is completely true and accurate. Dead eye bull’s eye.
Even if all of it were the way of things, God would not eliminate all evil. For the very good reason that Humans need several kinds of evil in their lives in order to develop, and live healthy, happy, useful lives. If they didn’t have these challenges, they would not develop properly; either mentally or physically. Honestly, go look it up. Humans require several kinds of evil to try to kill them. Measles for example. Chicken Pox. Poverty, injury, stress. Anxiety. How are we going to develop empathy if we never have anything go wrong? And we need that, otherwise we turn into psychopaths, and start skinning live dogs and putting cats in the oven.
Nothing about the Problem of Evil has anything to do with the Christian scriptures I’ve read for the last 40 years. And you are basing your belief on the outcome of this? Wow. I mean, I’m not going to try to save you from this, but just saying — nothing is accurate here.
God didn’t make evil. No. He made a tree.
We made evil. Why should he clean up that mess?
