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 omniscient, 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'.

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.

Another Wrinkle in the Cloth

While many traditional theodicies - stories that attempt to explain why God allows evil in our world - are definitively unconvincing to those not already committed to theism, the twentieth century saw the rise of a "reformed" philosophy of religion, spearheaded primarily by Alvin Plantinga, a prominent professor currently teaching at Notre Dame. This philosophical movement aimed to challenge many orthodox philosophical positions within epistemology and metaphysics, not least among these the treatment of the problem of evil and the existence of God.

Plantinga introduced, in his 1967 work God and Other Minds, a "defense" of theism against the argument from evil that hinges on free will. Rather than attempt to produce a theodicy that positively accounts for the existence of evil, Plantinga prefers to establish only that the existence of God and evil are jointly possible, in a broadly logical sense. If his move succeeds, he will not prove that God exists, but he will prove that theistic belief is not irrational given the existence of evil.

Plantinga argues that God has a sufficient reason to allow some moral evil: only in this way can He make possible the greater moral good of human freedom. He means to discredit theological compatiblism - the view that God can allow human freedom and prevent moral evil. The theological compatiblist position claims that God may create free moral agents whom he knows will always choose to do the right thing. To argue against this position, Plantinga produces a logically possible proposition that would ensure even God cannot ensure free moral agents always do the right thing.

Suppose God creates an agent with the intent that this agent freely chooses the good all the time. Now, if the agent is to freely choose some good, she must actually be free to choose it or to refrain from choosing it. Further suppose that there is a world - the world God wants to make actual - in which that agent does choose the good all the time. This world can only be made actual if its predecessor - a "world segment" that includes all of the world's states of affairs save the agent's choice - is first made actual (before it can be true that an agent chooses the right thing in a situation, the agent must be presented with the situation at hand).

But if a world segment is made actual, then, if the agent is free with respect to the decision that must be made, God cannot control whether the agent will freely choose to do right or wrong. The upshot, according to Plantinga, is that theological compatiblism must be false - for God to determine that an agent will do right all the time is inconsistent with that agent freely choosing to do right all the time. Plantinga thinks the proposition "God determines that an agent will always freely chooses to do right" is analogous to "God creates a married bachelor."

Plantinga furthers his defense in God, Freedom and Evil. If it is logically possible that all agents are depraved (will go wrong with respect to some action or other) in any world in which they exist, then it is logically possible that God could, no matter which agents he caused to exist, never create a world with human freedom and no moral evil.

He thinks there is no reason to question the possibility of "transworld depravity," and thus concludes that his defense fends off the problem of evil. Many philosophers - both theistic and atheistic - agree with this assessment, although there is no settled consensus on the matter. The problem of evil will not likely go away so easily, as the matter of non-moral evils (diseases, predation and natural disasters, for instance) cannot be solved by Plantinga's defense.

References

Plantinga, Alvin: God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967).
Plantinga, Alvin: God, Freedom and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's Publishing Co, 1977).