I have a problem.

Wait, allow me to rephrase that.

You, theist, have a problem. In fact, it is the problem, the uberproblem, the problem of problems, the problem to end (or start) all problems; it so superlative that the word "problem" begins to lose its meaning, and that's a problem.

I'm relatively sure you've heard of it at least once in your life, though its form may be different from what will be presented. Nevertheless, the presentation holds no bearing on its fundamental logic. Stock up on bread and fish, for this will be long.

----------

The Problem of Evil

The Problem of Evil (POE) is, in quintessence, the dilemma that arises when one attempts to rationalize the obvious presence of evil and suffering with the existence of the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being commonly known as God, and it can be called a reductio ad absurdum of God's existence. It is directly relevant to many of our modern monotheistic world religions insofar as failure of reconciliation would merit falsification, but the problem may also apply to polytheistic traditions, which, after all, is the context in which this problem is initially formulated.

Epicurus is accepted to be the first to both formulate and expound upon the argument, and it is, at times, referred to as "The Epicurean Riddle" or "Epicurus' Paradox." It is, however, inaccurate to refer to the argument as a riddle or a paradox, insofar as riddles and paradoxes have a solution. According to Epicurus, there is no such solution.

"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?" — Epicurus, as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief

The Logical Problem of Evil, gratuitously lifted and rehashed from Wikipedia (1), is as follows:

1. God exists. (Premise)
2. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. (Premise)
3. An omnibenevolent being is opposed to all evil. (True by definition)
4. An omnibenevolent being who can eliminate evil will do so immediately upon knowledge thereof. (Premise)
5. God is opposed to all evil. (Conclusion from 3 and 4)
6. God can eliminate all evil completely and immediately (Conclusion from 2)

* Whatever the greater good brought by suffering is, God can bring it about without suffering. (Conclusion from 2)
* God has no reason not to eliminate evil. (Conclusion from 6.1)
* God has no reason not to act immediately. (Conclusion from 5)

7. God will eliminate evil completely and immediately. (Conclusion from 5, 6.2, and 6.3)
8. Evil has always and will likely continue to exist. (Painfully Obvious Premise)
9. 7 and 8 are contradictory; therefore, one of the premises must be false: Either god does not exist, evil does not exist, or god is not both omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
10. Evil exists; (Premise 8) hence, God, as defined, does not exist.

Notice how there is an emphasis "as defined" in the conclusion - this means to illustrate that the argument does not disprove every concept of a deity; it only disproves the concept of god as defined, which means that Horus, Thor, and the Invisible Pink Unicorn might still exist. It is, after all, a reductio ad absurdum form of argument, which is to say that it heavily depends on a strict definition of "God" as having the three omni characteristics. Oh joy.

What was stated above is the logical (a priori) Problem of Evil, which is considered inadequate and inferior to the evidential (a posteriori) Problem of Evil since it simply is not a definitional truth that benevolence is incompatible with evil, that is, suffering. Evil, after all, is often used as a method to bring about a greater good. The pain of a vaccination spares one from the pain of, say, smallpox. The evidential argument, then, is reformulated into a probabilistic argument that uses "gratuitous and unnecessary evil" in lieu of "general evil/suffering," which is usually presented in the following form:

1. Gratuitous evils probably exist.
2. Gratuitous evils are incompatible with the theistic God, being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.
3. Ergo, the theistic God probably does not exist.

Now, let us cut to the chase.

Theists probably agree with item 2, but not with item 1. It is likely that the theist believes that God has an ultimately good reason for any sort of evil, Natural or Moral, that comes around, and that there is no such thing as a gratuitous evil; even a child getting molested by some priest serves a greater good. With that kind of perspective, it is possible for the theist to create a counterargument with the same premise, and they present it in the following form:

1. God exists.
2. Gratuitous evils are incompatible with God.
3. Ergo, gratuitous evils do not exist.

It is obvious that item 1 is critical to the argument, for if it were true, then there would be no actual need to refute the Problem of Evil. For a more compelling Argument from Evil, then, one must present refutations of the traditional proofs for the existence of God (Cosmological, Ontological, Teleological); this is quite easy, since all of these arguments have fatal flaws in them.(5) This, therefore, is an argument that cannot be deemed as sound, since premise 1 is yet to be proven, and the conclusion is itself in contention, which leads me to the concept of the theodicy.

---------------

The explanations that are handed out for apparently gratuitous evils such as tsunamis and hurricanes are called Theodicies, and brilliant as some may be, "many professional philosophers of religion -- both theist and atheist alike -- would agree that existing theodicies are flawed." (1) Peter Van Inwagen, a theist, stated that "Examination shows there is no known way of answering this case, and there is good reason to think that no way of answering it will be forthcoming."(3) Even Alvin Platinga, the creator of the Modal Ontological Argument, said that "...many of the attempts to explain why God permits evil -- theodicies as we might call them -- seem to me shallow, tepid and ultimately frivolous."(4)

Why is it that these philosophers of religion see theodicies as fundamentally flawed? This is likely because present theodicies are simply too ambiguous and ad hoc, in the sense that theodicies cannot explain all types of evil. Though some may account for moral evil, can they give an equal reason for animal suffering? Does it fit into all time frames and all contexts? Does it go against present moral norms? These criteria can be phrased in quite a number of ways, and these phrasings can be, at times, inclusive of each other, thus complicating the list. It is of convenient chance, then, that Nicholas Tattersall has compiled a small list of questions to ask of any theodicy, though mutually inclusive.

* Can we conceive of any logically possible world where the purpose is fulfilled and there is less intense suffering and premature death?

* Is the present system too ambiguous? Is it important for the theodicy that people are aware that evil and suffering are necessary for the purpose to be fulfilled?

* Does the theodicy explain the suffering of non-human animals, the majority of which occurred before humans existed?

* Does the theodicy work in all conceivable cases? To take one extreme instance of natural evil, does it explain the suffering of a one-year-old orphan who is buried and killed by a landslide and is never found or missed?

* Does the theodicy explain the drastic variations in suffering over time and in different places?

* Does the theodicy have doubtful ethical consequences? For example, should we be working against suffering according to the theodicy, or should we be allowing it as part of God’s plan? Are the goods described all really worth the resulting suffering?

Let us keep these questions in mind as we then evaluate what the random theist usually asserts as a defense against the POE. But that begs the question: what would any random theist assert? For convenience's sake, I shall utilize a list that I have previously compiled based on the relative amount of logic they have, however minute that may be.

1. The Free-Will Defense (FWD)
2. The "This is the best of all possible worlds" Defense by Leibniz
3. The Unknown Purpose Defense (UPD)
4. The Arrogant Atheist/"How Dare You!" Defense (HDY)

Let us handle theodicy one. The Free-Will defense is regarded as the most intuitively appealing theodicy for Christians, since it is in fact the easiest way to weasel one's god out of the problem of evil. In essence, this position holds that "[a] good God would have reason to create a world in which there were men with a choice of destiny and responsibility for each other, despite the evils which would inevitably or almost inevitably be presented in it, for the sake of the good which it contained." (6) Simply stated, God valued free will to such a high degree that all the evils that would result from it was wholly justified. It is therefore the case, at least from this perspective, that all evil simply came from Original Sin, and God is not to be held responsible for it; it was all for a greater good, the inherent good of free will.

Intuitively plausible indeed, but at its core lay flaws. The single most important issue that this theodicy fails to cover is that of non-moral evil, evil that is not traceable to human acts. The free will of human beings cannot be blamed for occurrences that cause mass death and destruction for no apparent purpose, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, famines, floods, and the occasional meteor strike. All these events are independent of human will and our influence on such things, if any, is minimal. It remains to be demonstrated that non-moral evil is a result of free will or contains some obscenely greater good, and this therefore means that the FWD can only explain traceable moral evil, thus failing to satisfy the six points listed above. Some evils must then be attributed to God, and Problem of Evil therefore remains unscathed.

On a further exposition, the FWD assumes that contra-causal free will actually exists, but that will be handled later. Let us take the fundamental premise of the FWD which states that God valued free will so much that it justifies the evil that arises from it. If God did value free will to such a high degree, why does he not interfere when the free will of an individual is in fact violated all the time? Let us take for example the scenario of a sex offender raping an innocent girl. Should God interfere, then the offender violates the girl's free will to not get raped, while if God interferes, he would violate the offender's free will to rape. Presented with such scenarios, God nevertheless remains obstinate. The question that arises from this is "whose free will holds higher value, then?" God's apathy then implies that the rapist's free will holds primacy, thus prompting us to realize a contradiction between this and omnipotence - the Problem of Evil all over again. God's permitting the rape to occur is logically no different from his permitting any other moral evil to occur, since a violation of free will happens either way - it is in this spirit that the FWD shoots itself in the foot.

The Bible itself has something to say on this. We acknowledge that Adam and Eve did in fact have a neutral choice when it comes to sinning (choosing evil) and whatnot. However, "this doctrine [original sin] holds that all subsequent human beings did not face a neutral choice, like Adam and Eve, but that they instead were born with a sinful nature which forced them to commit sin." (2) It is clear that the Bible states that "no human being can avoid committing sin;" one may refer to section 3.2 of the source for supporting passages. This then means that true free will was not present in humanity after the fall, thus rendering the FWD null, for its assumption that genuine free will exists for all humanity is gone.

This defense also assumes that contra-causal free will exists, which is a notion that is "not held by the majority of contemporary philosophers," but is still rather popular and thus widely discussed among non-academics. (7) Much has been said of contra-causal free will, and it would only be redundant to retype them here. One ought to rather browse Wikipedia or Infidels.org to more thoroughly understand why most no longer accept the colloquial notion of free will. As of present, the burden of proof rests with the libertarians.

Theodicy two is a tricky defense proposed by Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz to justify the world's imperfections yet again. This defense simply states that "we live in the best of all possible worlds." In other words, the world and indeed the universe in which we live in is fine-tuned to facilitate the minimum amount of evil while maximizing the good. It is a fairly simple hypothesis, but as it is, it is just that - a hypothesis.

An alarming problem with this argument surfaces when one take into account God's being both omnipotent and omniscient along with, surprisingly, the logic of the ontological argument. If one claims the world to be the best possible world, then this is necessarily equivalent to saying that it is the greatest possible world, and by definition, one cannot conceive of a world greater than this. In simpler words, if anything is to be the best, then it means that there is no room for improvement. Leibniz, however, takes this world to be the greatest possible, yet we can conceive of a better world, one where there is less evil; this clearly means that there is room for improvement. One can envision a unified Roman Empire, a peaceful Iraq, a prosperous Africa, or even a hippy Hitler. Clearly, these worlds are better insofar as they harbor less evil, and logically conceivable worlds are logically possible worlds. Is this world, then, the best possible world? It is not.

This raises the question as to why God, being all-knowing, did not create the better worlds that we can conceive of. If God was indeed omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, then it is without question that he would have created such a world. But as it is, he did not. The triad is therefore inconsistent, and one of God's supposed qualities must be sacrificed, thus eliminating the god of theism along with Leibniz's theodicy.

Theodicy three is what theists usually throw out in the event that other theodicies are discovered to be insufficient or unsound. The Unknown Purpose Defense (UPD) is short and to the point, usually only resorting to statements of blind faith. "God has some hidden, unknowable purpose that justifies all the evil we see here," proponents say. Simply stated, it casually asserts that although god wants evil to be extinguished, he has some other, mysteriously unknowable desire that overrides it for some other, mysteriously unknowable greater good.

A pressing concern with this theodicy is that it simply does not explain anything; it merely "appeals to the idea of mystery," (8) thus only succeeding in raising more questions. On a lighter but equally condemning note, such a retort would only be dismissed as a form of immunization, rendering the assertion essentially unfalsifiable and thus useless; it is an excuse for not taking conflicting evidence even into consideration, an excuse for not thinking. One could just as easily use this defence to justify the existence of the Lightning-Throwing Bunny God. Ergo, any attempt to defend such an unfalsifiable assertion is thus circular and quite useless, since the only reason that one dismisses an objection to one's faith is simply one's faith.

Also, if any evil x were necessary in bringing about a greater good, this would bring into question god's omnipotence, for by definition, an omnipotent being can bring about this greater purpose without having to resort to great evil, leading to another contradiction. If evil is necessary, then god is thus not omnipotent; the possibility god of theism is thus extinguished.

The final theodicy is somewhat comedic, to an extent. The "How Dare You!" Defense (HDY) is simply the assertion that God is overly superior to man, and it would only be arrogant of man if he thinks that he can judge god; hence, the alternative name of this defence is the Arrogant Atheist Defense. "The real problem in the Problem of Evil is arrogance," (9) so says David Ridley Stroop. His criticism of the POE puts its weight on the unsoundess of this supposed assumption of the POE: "man can reliably know what any possible all-powerful, all-knowing, loving god should do about evil."

Granted, man cannot reliably know what any possible all-powerful, all-knowing, loving god should do about evil; the proposition that man can reliably know a god's obligations is unsound. This, however is wholly inconsequential to the POE. One should notice that this supposed assumption - that which states that we cannot know what God should do about evil - already assumes that evil exists, which is precisely what the POE is showing to be incompatible with an all-powerful, knowing, loving being. The POE is attempting to show that if any such being exists, then evil should not even at all exist; the question as to what such a being would do about evil is therefore meaningless. The POE thus survives this critique unscathed.

All the academically acceptable theodicies have now been handled; lesser, more colloquial theodicies might find key similarities in those taken up above. It would also be worth noting that theodicies are generally not mutually exclusive; they may at times overlap with one another. In totality, theodicies have a flaw that they all have in common. If any particular theodicy is true, then morality would be nullified, in the sense that since God permits even the most outrageous atrocities, any sort of "evil," be it moral or natural, can somehow be rationalized to be for the greater good; this is most pronounced in theodicy three. Consequently, there is nothing that is truly "evil," since in the eyes of God, it all is necessary to serve a greater good. We are then justified in permitting evil to occur, or even perhaps in committing evil, since it can all be attributed to God's will and plan - an untenable consequence for theists and atheists alike.

---------------

The strongest argument against any omnipotent, omniscient, and loving being has been shown to be the Problem of Evil, and this is evidenced by the fact that despite more than two thousand years of theodicies, the argument still stands. There is one final reply that a theist may deploy, and it is one that concerns faith. In defiance of all rationality, the theist may still adhere to the theism out of blind, unyielding conviction, which is sufficiently impermeable to reason.

To quote Friedrich Nietzsche, "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."

Seeing as how there is no reason to see any forthcoming resolution to the POE, we may then conclude that the god of both Christianity and Islam, that which is defined to be simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, has been demonstrated to be inconsistent with itself; belief in such beings, then, is unreasonable.

(1) Problem of Evil - Wikipedia. 28 July 2007 (Last modified). Accessed 28 July, 2007. http://.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

(2) The Evidential Argument from Evil. Internet Infidels. 1998. Accessed 28 July, 2007. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nicholas_tattersall/evil.html

(3) Peter van Inwagen (1991) "The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence," Philosophical Perspectives, 5, Philosophy of Religion, ed. James E. Tomberlin. Reprinted in The Evidential Argument from Evil, (ed. Daniel Howard Snyder, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996).

(4) Alvin Plantinga (1988), "Epistemic Probability and Evil," Archivo di filosofia, volume 56. Reprinted in The Evidential Argument from Evil, (ed. Daniel Howard Snyder, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 70.

(5) Arguments for the Existence of God, Internet Infidels. Accessed July 27, 2007. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/arguments.html

(6) Swinburne, R. (1991). The Existence of God. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

(7) Libertarianism (metaphysics) - Wikipedia. 4 August 2007 (Last modified). Accessed 9 August, 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_%28metaphysics%29

(8) The Arguments from Confusion and Biblical Defects, Theodore Drange. Internet Infidels. 1998. Accessed 13 August, 2007. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/confusion.html

(9) The Supposed Problem of Evil, David Ridley Stroop. Biblical Studies. Dec. 19, 2002. Accessed 13 August, 2007. http://www.biblicalstudies.org/journal/v006n01.html

All italics are mine.

Article Source: http://www.articleated.com

The author is a regular writer for Articleated.com