The problem of evil

• inductive reasoning

  -where we make predictions about what we don't know based on what we do, so we get probable answers

  -for example, deciding when to leave based on traffic patterns

  -most reasoning is inductive
• deductive reasoning

  -employs logic, so we get certain answers

  -it is where you come to conclusions based on certain premises
• free will defence

  -evils are entirely due to the bad, free, choices made by human beings

  -good of God to create free beings, but bad of them to misuse freedom

  -can't use evils as an objection to belief in Him, as he isn't responsible

  -requires libertarian account of free will; ignores that most of the ills are natural evil, or assigns them to supernatural bad beings

  -discounts logical possibility of God creating free beings who would use freedom to choose good, as some of us try to

  -rejects possibility of a God who insulates the rest of us from would-be evil-doers by isolating them
• Hick's soul making theodicy

  -Hick presented this as an extension of Irenaeus’s theodicy

  -God created humans in an 'epistemic distance' (a distance in knowledge/ awareness) from himself so humanity can freely come to know and love him

  -presence of evil is necessary for moral & spiritual development

  -employs a universalist perspective, believing all humans will eventually be reconciled with God

  -e.g. can only develop generosity & bravery in a troubling place; helps peoples' virtues grow

  -if we were programmed to always do good we'd be immoral robots
• responses to logical problem of evil


  -responses to this problem often involve exploring the limitations of human understanding and the possibility of greater goods resulting from suffering

  -free will defence
• Augustinian theodicy

  -Augustine of Hippo conceived this theodicy based on his readings of the Bible and his own philosophical ideas

  -based on the doctrine of original sin, arguing that all humans are innately sinful due to Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden

  -God is justified in allowing evil and suffering, as it serves as a punishment for human sin

  -according to Augustine, God’s creation was originally perfect, but was corrupted by free-willed creatures

  -God foretold that this fall would happen and therefore sent his son, Jesus Christ, so that humanity may be reconciled
• Irenaean theodicy

  -Irenaeus proposed a theodicy focused on the development of humans into the likeness of God

  -evil and suffering are necessary parts of human moral and spiritual development, termed as soul-making

  -the process of becoming perfect and achieving union with God is understood as theosis, which is achievable through experiencing evil and suffering
• process theodicy

  -developed by Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, process theodicy views God not as all-powerful, but as a being who constantly changes and develops in response to the world

  -evil is not created or condoned by God, but is an unavoidable part of the creative process

  -they suggest God suffers with creation, and thus mitigates the problem of evil by sharing in the world’s pain
• privatio boni

  -God shouldn't willingly create evil

  -evil is not a thing, but rather a lack (absence) of good

  -darkness is an absence of light, cold is an absence of heat, so evil is an absence of good

  -God can't be accused of creating evil but must allow people to be able to reject Him
• evidential problem of evil

  -although some might argue that God and suffering aren't logically incompatible, they would nevertheless argue that the balance of evidence is away from God's favour

  -this due to the amount of suffering in the world as well as its nature

  -it's an inductive argument, so regards evil as evidence against God's existence (doesn't try to claim that evil logically proves God’s non-existence)

  -this is the a posteriori argument that the evidence of evil in the world makes belief in God unjustified
• Hume's evidential problem of evil

  -Hume is an empiricist and approaches the problem of evil as such. He points out the a posteriori evidence of evil in the world

  --> animal suffering-why shouldn’t nature be created such that animals feel less pain, or indeed no pain at all?

  --> creatures have limited abilities to ensure their survival and happiness

  --> why does nature have extremes which make survival and happiness more difficult? Natural evil

  --> why doesn’t God intervene to prevent individual natural disasters?
• Hume's evidential problem of evil analysis

  -a God could have made this world without such evil, making it evidence against a perfect God existing

  -Hume says it is ‘possible’ that a perfect God exists but allows evil for reasons consistent with omnibenevolence, 'but they are unknown to us' 

  -Hume is arguing that whatever speculations theologians like Augustine and Irenaeus might invent about God’s ‘reasons’ for allowing evil, we have no evidence that God has such reasons
• Augustian theodicy continued

  -sort of counters the soul-making theodicy

  -says evil isn't an inherent quality of a being; if it were then God wouldn't be good because he would knowingly create something bad

  -Augustine argues evil is a privatio boni

  -he believes God created the universe in a perfect state but Adam and Eve chose to do evil, and God had to punish them as he is just and good

  -humans are defective as they are unable to chose good even though they want to, and this defect has been transmitted from human to human via birth
• issues with Augustine

  -why would Adam and Eve want to commit evil in paradise?

  -there seems a great injustice underlying God, as he is punishing the whole human race by allowing them to be born with an intrinsic disposition to do evil, even though it was only Adam and Eve who did it
• issues with John Hick

  -so much suffering that exists in the world isn't soul-making e.g. children who suffer before they become adults as they don't have the chance to develop great qualities (they are simply crushed by pain)

  -the future life according to Christians has no suffering it

  --> the Book of Revelation depicts a new world without pain and tears

  --> if God in the future re-creates the world without suffering it suggests that he can do it whilst at the same time keeping free will; if that is the case then why does he not just do that in the first place?
• logical problem of evil

  -deductive argument with 4 premises

  -pioneered by philosophers such as Epicurus and Hume

  -an omniscient God would know about evil and how to get rid of it

  P1- an omnipotent God has the power to eliminate evil

  P2- an omnibenevolent God has the motivation to eliminate evil

  P3- nothing can exist if there's a being with the power & motivation to eliminate it

  P4- evil exists because we experience evil in the world

  C1- evil, omnipotence & omnibenevolence form an inconsistent triad such that God and evil can't co-exist

  C2- therefore God doesn't exist
• Libet's experiment

  -neurologist Benjamin Libet performed a sequence of experiments in 1983 that were enthusiastically, if mistakenly, adopted by determinists and compatibilists to show that human free will doesn't exist

  -his measurements of the time before a subject is aware of self-initiated actions have had a enormous, mostly negative, impact on the case for human free will, despite Libet's view that his work does nothing to deny human freedom
• determinism

  The view that free will is an illusion, and that our behaviour is governed by internal or external forces over which we have no control.
• compatibilism

  The view that the existence of free will and moral responsibility is compatible with the truth of determinism.
• libertarianism

  Our choices are free from the determination or constraints of human nature and free from any predetermination by God.
• theodicy

  -vindication of God

  -a philosophical attempt to explain the existence of evil in a God-created, good world
• the Fall

  -describes the transition of Adam & Eve from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience

  -the doctrine of the Fall comes from a biblical interpretation of Genesis, chapters 1–3

  -Adam & Eve initially lived with God in the Garden of Eden, but the serpent tempted them into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good & evil, which God had forbidden

  -afterwards, they became ashamed of their nakedness & God expelled them from the Garden to prevent them from eating the fruit of the tree of life and becoming immortal
• Augustinian theodicy & free will

  The Augustinian theodicy argues that, due to the Fall, we no longer have complete free will.
• part 1 of A.T.-the 'privatio boni' idea

  -in the same way darkness is the absence of light, humans lack something

  -they are not evil, as goodness is to do with what you will

  -humans will to be happy, so this makes them good

  -even bad people will the good, but they just lack knowledge, love, common sense etc.
• why does God allow privatio boni?

  -he can't force people to be good: they have to choose

  -the love potion analogy-it's not right to force someone to love you, as they have to choose
• part 2 of A.T.-the Fall

  -Augustine hugely influenced by Plato

  -similarity between Garden of Eden story & Realm of Forms (both places of perfection to places of evil)
• the Forms and the Garden of Eden

  -Plato says we have concepts which we get from experience

  --> unicorn is non-existent, but we've an experience of a horn, white etc. & they come together

  -Plato's argument from anamnesis says we're able to make judgements about beauty as we've an idea of the most beautiful

  --> if we've an idea we must have experienced it

  --> experience must be pre-natal as we haven't experienced most beautiful in this realm, therefore we've come from a perfect realm

  -can be applied to Garden of Eden

  -Plato (Phaedo): 'our learning is nothing else than recollection'
• Augustine

  -a follower of Neoplatonism before converting to Christianity in his 30's

  -was misogynistic which he got from Plato, and had negative views towards sexuality

  -had a child out of wedlock
• history of Salvation according to Augustine

  -God is perfect & perfectly good & just

  -God initially created a perfect world without fault, and humans initially had free will as a consequence of perfection (can't be perfectly happy without freedom)

  -story of Adam & Eve is a memory of real time but not literally true; remembers a time of perfection similar to Realm of Forms

  -Adam & Eve ate the apple in the Garden, which symbolises self-worship

  --> supreme act of selfishness & rejection of God
• history of Salvation according to Augustine continued

  -God needs to punish humanity as just, so expels them from Garden

  -all subsequent humans inherit 'genetic defect' of original sin

  -we can't do good because of this defect

  -we have very limited free will, as the defect in our nature makes us lose control

  -St Paul (Jesus' disciple): 'for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, I keep on doing the evil I do not want to do'
• the Fall of nature (A.T.)

  -explains natural evil

  -nature is cruel & violent & hazardous due to the Fall of the Angels (Jewish traditions not biblical)

  -e.g. Lucifer (bearer of light) fell from grace

  -angels control nature
• unjust weakness of A.T.

  -one of biggest criticisms

  -seems unjust and unfair

  -we wouldn't want to go to prison for our ancestors' crimes

  -yet we are being punished for the crimes for our ancestor Adam & Eve

  --> BUT being punished for family, where you work etc is prevalent today e.g. Britain paying for colonisation years ago
• perfection weakness of A.T.

  -if God created the world initially in a perfect state, why did Adam and Eve sin?

  --> BUT at Easter the Church refers to Adam & Eve's sin as 'felix culpa' (happy fault), which implies Adam and Eve's sin was intended by God: good things can come from bad stuff
• evidence weakness of A.T.

  -no empirical evidence of the Fall of the Angels or the expulsion of Adam & Eve

  --> BUT Plato's anamnesis argument
• Plantinga's Free-Will Defence

  -unlike Hick, Plantinga is not presenting us with a Theodicy (the best possible explanations for evil and suffering)

  -he is simply defending the following proposition: it is not a logical contradiction to hold that God is omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent and that there is suffering
• Plantinga's Free-Will Defence argument

  -a possible world is a world that could be the case e.g. there's a possible world where there're green sheep but there isn't a possible world where there are 4-sided triangles

  -when choosing to create, the perfect God would choose the best possible world

  -there's a possible world where there're beings who always do what we would think is morally good

  --> this is logical since it's possible to do morally good actions
• Plantinga's Free-Will Defence argument continued

  -however to do morally good actions you need to be able to choose between a good action and a bad action and to know what the difference is between what good and evil is

  -given this freedom of choice, sometimes people will choose what is evil

  --> Plantinga calls this freedom ‘significantly free’

  -therefore, in the possible world where people always choose to do the good there cannot be free will

  --> as sometimes people will inevitably chose evil
• Plantinga's Free-Will Defence analysis

  -but the best possible world would be a world where there is freedom of choice since a human is a much better being than a robot

  -it therefore follows, that if God wants to create the best possible world he must create a world where there is freedom of choice

  -but it follows then that in the best possible world evil actions will sometimes be committed

  --> this is known as transworld depravity

  -the fact that evil actions are committed in this world does not undermine the idea that God is all-powerful, omnipotent, benevolent etc.
• weakness of S.M.: purposelessness

  -some evil is dysteleological

  --> no chance of leading to spiritual development

  -e.g. a child who dies of cancer. They are too young to even understand what is happening, let alone learn anything from it. Most animal suffering is also dysteleological
• weakness of S.M.: soul breaking

  -destroys a person’s character rather than building it up and developing it

  --> some crushed into a depression or PTSD when they experience evil. This suggests that evil doesn’t have this positive purpose that Irenaeus & Hick try to claim

  -Holocaust as an example of evil which is dysteleological, soul-breaking & where the amount of evil outweighs our soul-making requirements

  -D. Z. Phillips questioned whether anyone in their “right mind” could say the holocaust was justified because a few survivors were strengthened by it