The "problem of evil" is a weak argument

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

The problem of evil is pretty much summed up as follows:

I know of a few people who call themselves atheists because of this argument. When I hear the argument for atheism being justified visa-vi the problem of evil, I cringe a little. The only thing TPOE can do for someone is discredit the idea of a benevolent god. It says nothing about the apathetic, indifferent, or malevolent god hypotheses.

The argument I think should look more like this:

TPOE is great for getting people to become non-Christians. But it does not follow to say that there is no god after pointing out that there is evil in the world. Assuming there is a god, a line of thinking like this should follow:

An atheist not believing in god because he’s evil is a little like a kid running away from home because he/she doesn’t like the parent’s rules. If there really is a god in this world, and there is evil, well guess what… An evil god exists. Get over it. You not approving of a god’s behavior is not indicative of that god’s existence.

What really matters is whether or not it makes sense to claim there is a god of ANY personality type, good or evil. Once you determine whether or not there is a god in the first place, THEN ask if it’s good or not.

I almost want to say that alleged atheists who claim to be atheists because of TPOE are not really atheists, but they just have a strong conviction against the evils of the church or something. Do they disbelieve in the EXISTENCE of the god, or do they just not approve of it?

2

Actually, the Problem of Evil doesn’t even show that a good God doesn’t exist, at least not in the way you’ve formulated it (or any other way I know). I sort of agree with you- I suspect the Problem of Evil is really begins with an emotional reaction to the evil in the world, and there have been attempts to ‘formalize’ it over the centuries to make it into something that carries more weight than a gut feeling.

3

Isaiah 45:7 says: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” A biblically based perspective ought to take that into account.

4

There’s another possibility you didn’t mention, Rule: God is not all-powerful.

There could be a god that is good who is not powerful enough to stop the evil.

There could be a god that is evil who is not powerful enough to stop the good.

There could be multiple gods with different objectives that have as of yet not been able to beat each other.

5

You are right that there are many other types or versions of gods that could exist. With every mention of another type that could exist the probability for any one of those god’s existence goes down. But thats not what i care about here.

I care about people’s use of the problem of evil to say something like “i don’t believe in god”. It doesn’t follow logically. The only thing it proves (for lack of a better verb) is the existence of evil; not that there is a low probability (or even nonexistence) of any god.

No real atheist should settle for “because there’s evil in the world” as their reason for not believing in a god. Its a purely emotional stance on why one thinks a particular way about the god theory. It has no connection to the validity of the existence of ANY type of god, or any AMOUNT of gods with whatever combination of personalities.

6

I think it is a matter of “what sort of God”. Deism is more-or-less extinct, and most people see no reason to postulate/create a god de novo, so they look to what they have been raised with and understand. While the heady realm of Christian theology/philosophy has dealt with this question (quite admirably, I might add) most people who leave the faith haven’t delved into that particular realm. So they are left with a God that they do ostensibly believe in who appears to be contradictory. Because of this seeming contradiction, they abandon belief in that God. So, they are left with a few options:

  1. Adopt a new religion. This happens a fair amount, actually. There are bound to be other seeming contradictions there, and they likewise will probably have been dealt with in the headier realms of said religion but new convert zeal will either cause them to not ask these questions or will spur them onto reading about them.

  2. Avoid religion all together. Join the atheist club, it is out there. It’s been pretty vocal for the past one-hundred-or-so years and comes in a variety of flavors.

  3. Make stuff up.

I don’t think it is too surprising that #3 is a road not often traveled. Or at least when it is done so, it is usually done under the auspices of #1.

7

Xunzian,

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, especially in the first part about the Problem of Evil being answered quite well, and yet, the atheist who leaves that faith leaving before they've explored those answers.  Where it gets problematic is that atheism has this pathos about it in the west of being caught up in heavy, dry, rationalism.  So, the doubter leaves the faith with the Problem of Evil, and when he comes back an atheist to criticize, he tries to turn that PoE into a logic-machine; after all,  haven't they abandoned faith for reason? Abandoning a faith for reasons of taste or emotion sit at odds with Dawkins-style atheism on a personal level, I think, and it certainly makes for a poor attack. 
Atheism does much better positively defended within a system that doesn't reference a God, than it does with these sorts of direct attacks against theism, which honestly defends itself better now than it ever has in our lifetimes.
8

Jews don’t believe in evil. Everything is God and therefore everything is good. Satan never rebelled and is only tempting people (on God’s command) so they can overcome the challenge and draw closer to God.

Basically, there is no evil. Only levels closer and farther from God.

9

So what about when a baby dies in a house fire? Or someone looses their job and becomes homeless? Or a hurricane wipes out a city?

Was that

A) God’s Action?
B) God’s Inaction?
C) Satan’s Action?
D) it just happened?

If you said either A or B, then God is evil, and that’s a problem.
If you said C, then that means that God is either incapable, or unwilling (or both) to intervene and stop Satan, which is a problem
If you said D, then that also means that God is either incapable or unwilling to intervene and prevent these events from occurring, which is a problem.

10

I did my dissertation on this subject recently, and came to roughly the same conclusions.

The Problem of Evil can only disprove an all good, all powerful and all knowing God’s existence iff God could have created the world without any evil. And this is the much disputed point. I assume the answers that Xunzian and Uccisore refer to are Alvin Plantinga’s transworld depravity argument? I am wary of this argument, however I have to admit that I (and probably anyone) cannot show it to be a logical impossibility, so the logical problem of evil seems to be resolved.

What I did conclude however is that the Problem of Evil provides ample evidence for an all PKG God’s non existence, and whilst it may not be proven, it is rational to believe there is no such being. Much along the lines of what Hume has to say in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

So for me, I admit that God cannot be proven or disproven, such a task may be impossible, but that evil provides good reason to not believe in an all PKG God.

If God exists, I would imagine Him to be indifferent towards good and evil, again much like Hume characterises Him.

11

Rather than junk the idea of a benevolent God, simply consider that God is not omnipotent. Works for me.

12

There may be a God.
If He exists, what is His nature? (omnipotent,interested or disinterested).
Natural disasters happen in this world unabated by God.
People choose to do evil unabated by God.
Is God unable to create this World or intervene in it?
If so, then His existence is irrelevant to our existence here.
Is God uninterested?
If so, then why did He create this World?
A relevant God must therefore be interested,
Yet God still does not intervene.
Therefore God is withholding the supernatural from this natural, rational World.
Therefore God is maintaining our free will.
If He exists.

I just made this up on the fly (time is limited), but I’m sure no one here needs an invitation to (attempt?) to shoot holes in it. I feel sure my underlying theology is sound, but my “if-thens” may need some work.

Divine benevolence during our threescore and ten against the back drop of eternity is a non-issue since the ostensible purpose of Creation is the evolution and continuation of our free will.

13

:-k

Lack of omnipotence, in such a being as a “god”, kind of defeats the purpose of its “god like” status. Sure you yourself can believe whatever you want to believe, but seeing as how you can’t prove it either way, the ontological argument would kick your ass. If you allow room for just one imperfection in a god-theory, like LACK OF omnipotence, there is no logical way to discern what OTHER imperfections are plausible or not. You would then be relying on pure subjectivism.

If god is not omnipotent, meaning all powerful, that implies that the other “omni-” traits like omniscience or omnibenevolence or omnitpresence, would also be nullified. If you don’t have “all power” you can’t have “all” of any one power.

Its kind of like this: Superman is omnistrong. Therefore every muscle in his body is individually omnistrong. It would be illogical to say that the his left calf muscle is not omnistrong, because you first started with the assumption that he is OMNIstrong.

Conversely: Superman is NOT omnistrong, but simply strong. Therefore it would not be logical to state that any one muscle in his body is omnistrong or omni anything, because you first started with the assumption that Superman is NOT omnistrong.

In math terms:
infinity - 1 = infinity
[some really large finite number] + 1 < infinity

If you assume omnipotence, every other trait follows to be “omni-” also.

Its an all or nothing deal.

14

rule110:

Your list of reasons is necessarily incomplete, and that’s why the P o E doesn’t work. You could include as many options as you want, and you’d always have room for

E) Something else.

Why is that important? It’s important because you can’t lock down a deductive argument when you don’t know the options. Without knowing all the options, it’s always possible that there’s evil, and there’s a good God anyway. See also my response to Humegotitright.

humegotitright

Yes, that's what convinced me initially the PoE failed, but since then, I've come to believe that there's something about the way concepts apply to discrete entities, that all such arguments are doomed to fail no matter what.  If you want to set out to prove that there's no such thing as a duck, your argument can be rock solid, and yet, there may yet be something we'd all agree was a duck. 
So, if you take the adjacent propositions in the PoE

A.) God is all powerful, and all good
and
B.) There is evil in the world,

in between those propositions you always have The World- in other words, a huge variety of known and unknown circumstances (free will is a part of it, transworld depravity could be, many things we don’t know surely are) that can stick particulars together in weird ways.
The other thing too, is that these kinds of arguments can only defeat narrowly construed versions of God’s properties. When the P o E works, all it’s really done is say something about
omnipotence worded thusly, or omnibenevolence as-such. But particular entities are, well, particular, and so a concept isn’t always (or ever) going to apply to them exactly the way you worded it. So, for any version of ‘omnipotence’ you defeat, it still remains entirely possible that the universe really was created by a Being that could be reasonably called All-Powerful, (or Omnipotent, or Supreme, or whatever) and satisfy the correctness of this or that religion.
This all goes back to Kripke, sort of, and the fact that when describing objects in reality, we come up with the terms before we rigorously define them.

I also agree with you that the PoE is much more successful when worded as an evidential argument, but like Xunzian said, almost nobody believes in Deism anymore, and particular religions have that side of it wrapped up pretty tight if you let them admit their demons, their Gardens of Eden, and so on into evidence.
15

My option D is the same thing as “something else”. The problem is not that you cannot fully list the options. The problem is that if the answer is NOT A B or C, then god’s unwillingness or incapability or both is apparent. Heck its apparent no matter how you slice it.

16

It seems to me that an awful lot of deduction hangs on the personal definition of “good” and “evil”.

In the bible, God encourages the Israelites to slaughter men, women, and children and take their land. Yet, the Israelites continually refer to God as “Good”, and Jesus agrees with this label.

So, what can a good God do, yet still remain good? ? It seems there would be a variety of opinion on the topic. But understanding what a Christian means when he says “God is good” would seem to be a prerequisite before abandoning the Christian God because of the POE.

17

rule110

I could ask you to prove that, and I’m pretty sure it’s not possible, but let’s run with it. Let’s say that for any option D of Why there is God and Evil results in God being either unwilling to prevent all evil, or unable to prevent all evil. So what? Between

1.) God is unwilling/unable to prevent all evil
and
2.) God is omnibenevolent and omnipotent.

you still have an infinite number of special circumstances (such as free will) that can justify both premises being true. There just isn’t an explicit logical connection between the premises. We can say that it seems hard to believe that such a God would allow such a world, and I think that’s what humegotitright would say, but even that means something completely different when you’re talking about a Person that has His own objectives and motivations, rather than a force or concept that only works in one predictable way.

18

If omnipotence is only applicable to the actions that the god takes, then fine. This would mean that if the god chooses to not act on it, that that doesn’t necessarily mean that he wouldn’t be able to.

Lets use hurricane Katrina, and the assumption that it would be BETTER if Katrina did not hit the coast.

If the god could have prevented Katrina, then he could be omnipotent. But seeing as how Katrina was not prevented, this brings up another very important line of questions:

  1. Did the god intend for Katrina to hit?
  2. Could the god have prevented it if he tried?

If yes to #1, then the god is not OMNIbenevolent. Keyword OMNI.
If no to #1, proceed to 2

If yes to #2, then omnipotence is not implausible.
If no to #2, then the god is not OMNIpotent.

The crux of this whole debate is the OMNI part of these traits. You can have a god that does good things, but if there is even the slightest glimmer of bad things that happen under that god’s reign then one if not all omni’s are illogical.

19

No, the Omnis are not strictly illogical in the presense of evil, or at least, you haven’t shown that they are. But that’s not the real problem here.
The problem is, you have people that argue that God can’t be OMNIpotent if He can’t make a square circle. My point is that it doesn’t matter- all you’ve done is define a term in a rigorous way, and then try to show that the term you’ve defined doesn’t obtain in reality. At the end of the day, it has nothing to do with whether or not God exists or some religion is true.

20

A square circle?! You’re moving the goalpost, and throwing out red herrings. I’m talking about the presence and prevention of evil and/or bad events (like hurricanes, and disease, and infant death, etc.).

Starting point: Bad events occur (for evidence i refer you to one of the many internet search engines and search for bad events like the ones listed above, let me know if you can’t find any and i’ll give you some links).

Therefore:
Either the god doesn’t want to intervene, or
The god is incapable of intervening, or
The god was unaware that there is an event that would necessitate an intervention, or
The god intended for the bad event to happen

For either of those four options, at least one of the omnis becomes illogical. Where is my line of thinking falacious?

(if you want to debate the badness of things like hurricanes, disease, and infant death, please save that for another thread)