On The Problem of Evil Pt. 1

Throughout the ages there has been one problem put more forcefully to theism than any other: If an all-loving God exists, how can there be evil in the world? Would not He, like the best of us, want to eliminate it where it arose, or prevent it from arising altogether? The problem is an obvious one, and has been put to theism in various formulations throughout the history of philosophy. The renowned skeptic David Hume put it thus:

"Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

Philosopher J.L. Mackie stated it clearly as well:

"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. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions; the theologian, it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three."

So, then, what is the theist to make of these claims? Must he abandon theism, or at the very least abandon belief in certain divine attributes (i.e. God’s being wholly-good)? To give a sufficient answer to this question, we must distinguish between two formulations of the problem of evil: The logical problem, and the evidential problem. The quotes above express the former. Part one of this discourse will deal with the logical problem. So just what is the logical problem?
There are several aspects to what philosophers classify as a logical problem. The first is that there must be an internal contradiction between two propositions. Here’s an example:

A) Bill is a bachelor
B) Bill is married to Margaret

These two statements contradict each other, obviously. But they don’t contradict each other because it’s improbable that Bill, a bachelor, would be married. They contradict each other because, upon understanding the definitions of the words marriage and bachelor, you see that they are logically incompatible. You don’t have to know whether Bill has a history of romance with Margaret, whether Margaret is the sort of girl who would fall for a slime ball like him, or that either of them even exist. So the contradiction is internal to these two propositions. They require no external information to validate or invalidate them. To break it down more still, let’s define bachelorism as P and marriage as Q. P, in this case, is such that P ^ Q (P and Q) would entail ~P (negation of P). So there is a logical inconsistency here.

So what the atheist is essentially claiming is that there is an internal inconsistency between the propositions,

A) An all-loving, omnipotent, omniscient God exists

and

B) Evil exists

Of course, other formulations might express B as “gratuitous evil exists” or “unnecessary amounts of evil exist”, but with respect to the logical problem the claim is the same: That there is a logical inconsistency between these ideas. But is there? Is it really that self-evident that an all-loving God would not have good reason for allowing the various evils and sufferings we see in the world? We must first explore some preliminary issues in order to sufficiently answer such questions.

First, we must clarify what the theist actually means when he claims that God is “all-powerful”. This is key to the rest of the whole discussion, so pay close attention. When we assign certain attributes to a person we assume that we’re working within the realm of logical coherence. For instance, when I say “Tim can think of any color”, do I mean “Tim can think of any color including ones that don’t exist”? No, of course not! The point is that, in using language, we assume logical coherence.

So how does this apply to God’s attribute of omnipotence? It means that when we say “God can do anything” what we’re really saying is, “God can do anything logically possible.” Just as, when we say, “Tim can think of any color” what we’re really saying is, “Tim can think of any color which is logically possible to think of.” Non-colors, or colors from non-existent dimensions, or whatever, aren’t logically possible to conceive of. Similarly, actions God performs must be assumed to be within the realm of logical coherence, otherwise we aren’t really saying anything meaningful. Richard Swinburne, professor of philosophy at Oxford University, makes the following point:

"God can do anything, but only some human sentences describe things. The sentence, 'God brings about your existence and non-existence at the same time' doesn’t describe anything."

Ever heard someone say “If God is all-powerful, could He create a rock which even He could not lift?” Well, the ideas expressed above resolve this issue. It is only if one defines God’s omnipotence as meaning “God can do anything logically possible and logically impossible” that these sorts of objections carry any weight. But almost no serious theist has ever defined omnipotence in this way. The definition, then, is settled. God’s omnipotence means that He can do anything logically possible.

So, then, what does this mean for the atheist who presents the problem of evil as a logical one? It means that he must show that there is no possible reason God could have for allowing evil in the world. This, I think, is a near impossible task. If the theist can show that there could be situations in which it is logically impossible for God to remove evil without thwarting some higher good (which the atheist would agree is always what a wholly-good God desires), then he will have succeeded in defeating the logical problem. As philosopher Greg Ganssle points out:
We don’t need to claim that we know why, exactly, God allows evil. We only need a possible reason that shows that the existence of evil is not inconsistent with the existence of God. And this, now, brings us to the most important figure in contemporary philosophy of religion: Notre Dame’s Alvin Plantinga.

In 1978 Plantinga published a little book called God, Freedom, and Evil that would change the face of philosophy of religion forever. In it he demonstrated that there is no logical problem for the theist. To do this, he showed that all the theist need do to dismantle the problem is to show any possible reason why God would allow evil for the sake of some higher good (keep in mind, again, the fact that God can only do that which is logically possible). He thus employed the Free-Will Defense (hereafter referred to as FWD) to show some scenarios in which this could be the case. The argument could be structured thus:

1) It is possible that among God’s highest moral values is the respecting of free-will, and the free response to accept or reject Him.
2) But that entails that some people might freely choose to reject Him, and as a consequence inflict moral evils upon the world.
3) In this case, it would be logically impossible for God to achieve the considerably high moral good of man’s free choice to accept or reject Him if He chose to destroy that evil. For that would entail destroying our creaturely freedom.
4) Therefore, God has a sufficient moral reason for allowing moral evils in the world which are caused by our free-will.

If you find the premises un-compelling or improbable, remember that the theist doesn’t have to show whether they’re actually true, or even probable. Rather, he merely has to show that these premises are possible given theism. For, if you remember what the logical problem actually entails, if it’s even possible that any of this is true on theism then there is no internal inconsistency.

Now, it may be objected at this point that God could create any possible world, including a world in which everyone freely chooses the good. There are two responses to this objection. The first being the fact that it’s unreasonable to assume that God could create any possible world. The second being Plantinga’s concept of transworld depravity. Let’s first deal with the former. Philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne and others have all pointed out that God cannot create just any possible world He wants. If He tried to actualize a possible world in which everyone chose the good, the only way he could guarantee they would is by actively causing them to do so, thereby thwarting their freedom. So, as Craig notes, it may not be feasible for God to try and create such a world. Because, if He were to try, the creatures in it still might end up rebelling against Him with their free-will. But ultimately this insight isn’t necessary for the current discussion, and I will discuss it more at length in the following discourse concerning the evidential problem.

So now we come to transworld depravity. This concept, like many of Plantinga’s, is indeed an odd one. The idea is that it could be that there are certain people who suffer from a condition called transworld depravity, which means analytically: In every possible world in which (P) exists, and has a significant level of freedom, P will on certain occasions act morally wrong with respect to at least one action. Again, this doesn’t have to be true or even likely, it merely needs to be possible. Plantinga goes on to say that this transworld depravity may not be only possessed by some, but may be a universal property of individuals. If this were the case, then it would be logically impossible for God to create a world which contained creatures with a significant amount of freedom and for them not to commit at least one act. For all we know, this could be true. I would even go further than Plantinga and claim that it’s epistemically natural to believe this. That is to say, I think most people will form the belief that this could very well be true given God’s desire to create any possible world with a significant amount of significantly free creatures. Again, if this were the case then it would be impossible for God to create a world of morally autonomous creatures who freely chose to accept Him without also having a number of other creatures who committed at least one morally evil act.

But now the question inevitably arises: What of natural evil? Isn’t there an inconsistency with God being wholly-good and evils occurring which are not caused by the free-wills of humans? In this case, indeed, there would be no logical impossibility in taking such things away without thwarting our free-will. Plantinga, taking it in stride, uses the FWD again for this very objection. He says that it’s also possible, given theism, that the natural evil in the world is the result of the free action of some other creatures (i.e., fallen angels). He also points out that it’s possible these fallen angels are actually severely transworld depraved beings. Given that this were the case, the FWD again reveals that God would be upholding His highest desire for moral autonomy by not intervening to stop these actions.

In conclusion I think Plantinga, and his predecessors, have sufficiently demonstrated that there is no logical contradiction between the idea of an all-loving God and the existence of evil (gratuitous, maximal, or minimal). But is this just the conclusion of some crazy evangelical scholars? Actually, no. It has become near universally accepted by contemporary philosophers of all stripes that the logical problem is a problem no more. Rather, the debate has now moved to the battlefield of the evidential problem of evil. There is virtually no literature now circulating which utilizes the logical form of the problem. William Rowe, the contemporary atheist philosopher, has said:

"Some philosophers have contended that the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the existence of the theistic God. No one, I think, has succeeded in establishing such an extravagant claim. Indeed, granted incompatibalism, there is a fairly compelling argument for the view that the existence of evil is logically consistent with the existence of the theistic God. (For a lucid statement of this argument, see Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil.)"

Along the same lines, prominent atheist philosopher James Still has said:

"It would seem that, barring any new necessarily true premises from God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness, Mackie’s conclusion that theism is logically inconsistent is false."

Again, Still has said:

"Based on Plantinga’s and Adam’s refutation…I am satisfied that the existence of God and evil are not implicitly contradictory."

Having now established with reasonable firmness that there is no inconsistency between the idea of God and the idea of evil, we must now hasten to our more lengthy, and more comprehensive, study of the evidential problem.