Problem of Evil

The problem of evil is a topic of much debate in theology and the philosophy of religion. It has been referred to as 'the rock of atheism', and is one of the major philosophical and emotional reasons for the active disbelief in a traditional monotheistic God. The problem can be expressed as follows:

If the traditional monotheistic God exists, then he is omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

Therefore, God knows of everything that exists.

Therefore, God would have the knowledge, ability, and desire to stop all evil. Thus, evil would not exist.

However, evil exists.

Therefore, the traditional monotheistic God does not exist.

Denying the Premises

The argument can be dismissed by dropping one or more of the three premises- that God is omnipotent, that God is omnibenevolent, or that evil exists.

Some philosophers have suggested that, perhaps, the solution to the problem of evil is to say that God in fact lacks one of the commonly presumed divine attributes. However, this is not much of a solution at all. If God lacks omnipotence, then he is reduced to the status of an impartial observer, or at any rate a constrained being that can only do finitely much to ameliorate the bad conditions that his creatures must suffer. If God instead lacks omniscience (an aspect of omnipotence), then he is unable to know what he ought to do in certain situations. Such a situation might even mean that God, in trying to help one of his creations, might inadvertently harm them instead. Finally, if God is not morally perfect, then we are in the thrall of either a negligent or positively evil deity. It is not difficult to see why this suggestion is unpopular amongst traditional theists.

Alternatively, one might deny that evil exists- a view taken by Augustine who classified evil as a privation. Perhaps we call those things we do not like \\\'moral evils\\\' without justification. But it strikes at the heart of our intuitions about what it means for something to be morally wrong if something like the torture of innocent children would not count. For that reason, this move is no more popular than the last.

The last part of the argument which can be denied is that an omnibenevolent God would want all evil to be stopped. Its proponents generally aim to establish that there are some cases in which allowing some evil to occur is morally justified - namely, those cases in which the allowance makes possible some greater good, or prevents some greater evil. A possible reason why God might allow moral evil, for instance, is that it is a necessary consequence of his allowing humans to exercise freedom of the will, a 'greater good'. This, however, is to misunderstand God\\\'s omnipotence. An omnipotent God would be able to maintain complete human free will while simultaneously ensuring that no moral evil arose without any contradiction occuring, even if we take the usual definition of omnipotence which does not hold that God can do the logically impossible.

There have been several theodicies put forward as attempts to resolve the problem of evil- for example, by Augustine and Irenaeus- but the succuess of theological responses to the problem of evil is limited at best.