The problem of evil

Question 1

definition of evil

Answer 1

Evil is the “profound immorality and wickedness, especially when regarded as a supernatural force”

Question 2

What kind of argument is the logical problem of evil

Answer 2

A priori – evil and classic theistic God cannot exist together – proves one of the greatest challenges within the Christian doctrine

• A priori argument – as logical conclusions without experience

Question 3

Epicurus - Logical Problem

Answer 3

1.Is God willing but not able to prevent evil? Then he isn’t omnipotent
2.Is God is able to prevent evil but not willing? Then he isn’t omnibenevolent
3.If God is both able and willing, then why is there evil?
4.If God is neither able or willing then why call him God?

Question 4

Mackie

Answer 4

‘Inconsistent triad’ - argued that the God of classical theism (omnipotent and omnibenevolence) cannot exist if evil exists.

Question 5

What does the ‘inconsistent triad’ prove

Answer 5

Omnipotence entails the power to eliminate evil. Omnibenevolence entails the motivation to prevent evil. Something cannot possibly exist if there is a being with the power and motivation to eliminate it. Therefore, if evil exists, an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God cannot exist. God could at most be omnibenevolent or omnipotent but not both.
Inconsistent as alleged as one cannot believe all at the same time without there being some contradiction

Question 6

Mackie quote

Answer 6

the conjunction of any two entails the negation of the third

Question 7

What kind of argument is the evidential problem of evil

Answer 7

A posteriori – evidence of evil within the world, makes belief in God unjustified
Logical possibility that evil and perfect God exist together, but evidence is against

Question 8

Hume - evidential problem, 4 statements

Answer 8

1-Animal suffering. Why shouldn’t nature be created such that animals feel less pain, or indeed no pain at all?
2-Creatures have limited abilities to ensure their survival and happiness
3-Why does nature have extremes which make survival and happiness more difficult? Natural evil
4-Why doesn’t God intervene to prevent individual natural disasters?

Question 9

Hume - evidential problem

Answer 9

God could have made without = evidence of non-existence
Hume says it is ‘possible’ that a perfect God exists but allows evil for reasons consistent with omnibenevolence, ‘but they are unknown to us’.
-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.
-We can only believe what evidence suggests, and so belief in perfect God is unjustified as you cant infer perfect goodness from evil
-Empirical inference from evil to belief in a perfectly good God is unjustified

Question 10

Hume quote

Answer 10

“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?”

Question 11

Mill - Evidential problem

Answer 11

Instead of an Omnibenevolent God (if there even is one) Mill argues that it is clear through observation of the natural world, that a sadistic immoral God must exist– one that we should not be basing our moral values off of

Question 12

What is Augustine’s’ theodicy

Answer 12

Soul Deciding – We have to choose whether or not to obey God, by turning back to God through the salvation of Christ

Question 13

Genesis - how this led to the birth of evils within the world

Answer 13

Original sin – couldn’t have been God as it would contradict his omnibenevolence and so looked at the Genesis story for an explanation
Garden of Eden was a perfect place. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and as a punishment were banished to this earth often called a ‘fallen world’. This episode is referred to as ‘the Fall’. After their sin, God said Eve will now have pain in childbirth and Adam would have to ‘toil’ the land to make food.
-Leads to a loss of harmony in nature and natural evil
-People continue to fall short, and this leads to moral evil

Question 14

Original sin effects

Answer 14

First sin of Adam and Eve corrupted all of humanity, corruption in human nature, which makes people want to sin
Seminal presence – all inherited ‘all seminally present in the loins of Adam’
all born sinful beings who therefore deserve this punishment of living in a fallen world. God is not responsible for evil as it results from the free will of angels and humans

Question 15

Augustine quote

Answer 15

“All evil is either sin or a punishment for sin” – Augustine.

Question 16

For Augustine what does evil exist as

Answer 16

Evil does not exist. It is merely a privation of good, meaning it is the absence of Good.
-Humans fell away from God so fell away from his goodness, resulting in what we mistakenly call ‘evil’
-Evil has no ‘positive existence’ only a negative one
E.g. darkness does not actually exist, it’s merely the absence of light. Darkness is not a ‘thing’ but our minds trick us into thinking it is.

Question 17

Augustine vs. the logical problem

Answer 17

Logical problem claims impossible for both God and evil to co-exist
Augustine – God allows evil because we deserve it
-If the logical possibility of that claim can be defended, then Augustine will have defeated the logical problem of evil.

Question 18

Original sin violates moral responsibility

Answer 18

Original sin violates moral responsibility – not ethical for all of humanity to be blamed for actions of Adam and Eve
-Suggests indefensible view of moral responsibility - people can be responsible for actions committed by others which is of special absurdity in this case since the action occurred before they were even born

Augustine: God did not blame all of humanity for Adam’s sin, factual consequence that we all became infected with due to seminal presence
-Made into sinful beings at birth
-Not being punished for Adam and Eve, but because we are sinful beings as we have OS

Question 19

Not our fault we have OS

Answer 19

-Unfair/incompatible with omnibenevolence that we are punished
-Especially when considering cases like a child with cancer, it’s difficult to maintain that a child deserves cancer because it has original sin

God’s justice that a child has cancer, and God is still omnibenevolent despite allowing

logically inconsistent

Peter Singer argues it is “impossible to believe” that a child who dies from natural evil deserved it because of sin.

Question 20

How does Augustine argue against unfair evils within the world that seemingly contradict his omnibenevolent nature

Answer 20

Augustine: Insists Gods reason and justice beyond human understanding
-Can’t use limited minds to judge God
-“secret yet just judgement of God”, indicating that it is inscrutable – impossible for us to understand – but we should have faith it is just.
Augustine points to Psalm 25:10: ‘All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth,’ and concludes: “neither can his grace be unjust, nor his justice cruel”.

Debatable that problem of evil is just because of epistemic distance
- Cop-out answer
- Fails to provide a logical response

Question 21

Augustine vs. the evidential problem

Answer 21

Evidential problem: Evidence of evil in the world makes belief in God unjustifiable
Augustine: God allows evil as we deserve it

Question 22

Scientific evidence against the fall:

Answer 22

Scientific evidence against the fall:
-Geneticists’ claim evidence from genetic diversity means impossible for all of humanity to have descended from two people
-Evolution – evolved not created

Augustine’s understanding of biological reproduction is false
-admits that procreation is a mystery to him, but still falsely continues to his claim that all future generations are “in the loins of the father”. –
-wrongly thought that reproduction worked by there being little people inside men, so when Adam sinned all future humanity became infected by it.

OS evident in society i.e. as a child he stole a pear from a garden for pleasure of sinning
- Concluded children desire to sin = must be born that way
- Concupiscence observed: people have their own will overwhelmed by bodily desires, which Augustine takes to be evidence for original sin.

Question 23

Pelagius - how Augustine’s observations of society are wrong

Answer 23

Augustine’s observations reflect his society, not human nature
-Although may appear that have strong forces within us that incline us towards evil , simply because of the way we are raised
-In our nature as upbringing ‘educated in evil’
could add contemporary historical and sociological evidence to Pelagius’ point
Humans have progressed
-Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.
-Steven Pinker attributes to the power of human reason that violence has decreased, even considering the 20th century.
-The average human life seems more secure than at any prior point in history.

If Augustine were correct that original sin caused an irresistible temptation to sin, then human behaviour could not have morally improved, yet it ha

Question 24

Alternatively: an omnibenevolent God would prevent transmission of original sin:

Answer 24

-God designed the natural laws by which procreation operates, and for some reason designed human procreation to allow the inheritance of original sin.
-omnibenevolent God would not allow a child to suffer negative consequences as a result of the actions of its ancestors, therefore God would not design procreation to pass on original sin.

Question 25

Irenaeus’ Theodicy

Answer 25

Doesn’t view fall as negative but a necessary stage in human development towards perfection
Adam and Eve are like children who go astray as they lack sufficient wisdom to do what’s right – punishment is a way to help mature

Question 26

Genesis - soul deciding

Answer 26

Genesis ‘God made humans in his image and likeness’,
-Made a distinction between image (on the surface) and likeliness (actually are something)

Question 27

Creation has two steps:

Answer 27

1)being made in God’s image where we have only a potential for good due to spiritual immaturity.
2)achieve God’s likeness by choosing good over evil which enables us to grow spiritually and morally.

The idea is that encountering and overcoming evil makes us become better more virtuous people.

Question 28

Biblical eg. of soul making

Answer 28

Biblical e.g. Jonah and Whale: Jonah disobeyed God and then the natural evil of a storm and a big fish who ate him and spat him out days later helped Jonah learn his lesson and he then obeyed God.
Evil thus serves the good purpose of motivating us to be good.

Question 29

Hick - two stages

Answer 29

argued that human beings were not created perfect but develop in two stages:
Stage 1: Spiritually immature:
-through struggle to survive and evolve, humans can develop into spiritually mature beings.
-The Fall is a result of immature humans who are only in the image of God
Stage 2: Grow into a relationship with God

Question 30

Hick - epistemic distance

Answer 30

cannot truly know of Gods existence
-If God made himself known we would follow out of obedience instead of following as we figured out on own
-it’s only if we have faith in God and still do good because we want to do good, than because we know for sure there’s a God who wants us to, that we can truly grow spiritually and morally

Question 31

Vardy eg. of why God cannot make himself known

Answer 31

Peter Vardy illustrated this with the example of a peasant girl who a King falls in love with and forces her to marry him. The girl doesn’t really love the King and only does it due to obedience to authority out of fear.

• Similarly, if God appeared to us we would obey his authority rather than really loving what is good for its own sake, which is the morally superior move and therefore most conducive to soul making.

Question 32

universal salvation

Answer 32

According to Hick everyone will be saved since a loving God would not send people to hell – universal salvation but post-mortem soul making is needed.

Question 33

Soul – making vs. the evidential problem

Answer 33

claims that God allows evil because it serves the good purpose of soul-making
-evidence that encountering and overcoming evil develops a person’s character and virtue.
- people become spoiled if they have too much luxury and not enough responsibility or difficulty to overcome. By going through harsh struggles, a person becomes stronger and gains compassion for others.

Question 34

Some evil is purposeless

Answer 34

Some evil is purposeless – no chance of leading to spiritual development
-A child dying from cancer, too young and not enough time to gain a whole new perspective of life and learn anything from it

Question 35

Some evil is purposeless - Hicks’ response

Answer 35

Hick: Evil which seems pointless part of soul-making
- If we believed that all evil was ultimately for a person’s benefit, then it would be difficult for us to really develop the deep meaningful sympathy that we feel for those who suffer pointlessly, which we need to develop for our own soul-making. For example, the child’s parents could learn something.

However, unsatisfactory because what if the child has no parents? Or animal suffering;
-William Rowe gave the example of a fawn dying in a forest fire. We have evidence that such things happen, but no one would ever be able to gain sympathy or compassion from them.

• evidence does not support the claim that God allows evil because it serves the good purpose of soul-making and thus Irenaeus & Hick fail to solve the evidential problem of evil.

Question 36

Soul – making vs. the logical problem

Answer 36

claims that it is impossible for God and evil to co-exist.
theodicy of Irenaeus/Hick claims that evil serves the good purpose of soul-making - If this is logically possible then Irenaeus has solved the logical problem of evil.

Question 37

Why didn’t God just make us good to begin with

Answer 37

Irenaeus answered that creating us fully developed was impossible
-Fully developed soul is one which chooses good over evil
-If God made us fully developed, he would be making us choose good over evil – if make someone do something then they don’t really do it
-God had to make us undeveloped and allow us the freedom to choose good over evil.

Why give us free will?
-Could have created and controlled us so there was no moral evil
-Is having free will worth the amount of genocides and murders that have occurred in the world

Question 38

Some evil is soul breaking

Answer 38

Isn’t some evil so bad that it is soul breaking? some evil destroy a person’s character rather than build it up and develop it? Some people are crushed into a depression or post-traumatic stress disorder when they experience evil. This suggests that evil doesn’t have this positive purpose that Irenaeus suggests.

Question 39

Some evil is soul breaking - response

Answer 39

could be responded that there is lots of evidence of evil being soul-making
-By going through harsh struggles a person develops and learns more
-Some people who get cancer gain a whole new lease on life
-Those whose souls are broken by evil simply failed to rise to the challenge of evil
-Evil provides us the opportunity to become better people by choosing to do good – juts because some people fail to make that choice doesn’t invalidate the theodicy

However, it seems harsh to, for example, say to a cancer patient that they failed to rise to the challenge if they become depressed by their situation. Arguably that is logically incompatible with omnibenevolence.