The Problem of Evil
I’m not a huge fan of theology, or religion, or atheist dogmas. I’m not a fan of dishonest theories propped up by feeble dogmas and fallacy.
One philosophical question, however, does intrigue me. It’s called the “Problem of Evil”, also known as the Epicurean paradox.
R.G. Swinburne, in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, states that, “the problem of evil has always been the most powerful objection to traditional theism.”
The problem of evil goes something like this:
premise 1: Evil exists in the world.
premise 2: An omnipotent and benevolent God would not allow evil to exist in the world.
conclusion: An omnipotent and benevolent God does not exist.
I sometimes wonder if philosophers aren’t the most obtuse people. Seriously, they come up with theories that lead to the murder of hundreds of millions, and somehow remain oblivious to it all.
The obvious error is in the second premise. By that premise, God gets to be either evil or totalitarian. By the logic of that premise, I’m an evil parent. I allow my children to do wrong, when I know it is wrong, and could stop them. I allow my neighbor to do wrong. In fact, not only do I allow people to do wrong, I defend their right to do wrong.
Why? Because I believe that people should be free to make their own decisions. If my son chooses to smoke, I’m try to reason with him, but I’m not going to force him to stop, even though I know smoking is wrong. If he chooses to be a racist and spew racist hatred, I’ll reason with him and I’ll disapprove, but I’ll also defend his right to be racist.
And it should be noted that the government does the same, in providing protection for Ku Klux Klan marches and White Supremacists and other hate groups. Our government not only allows such evil; it protects the right of evil to be evil, as they should. Should government then be considered evil? No.
An interesting side-note here. In the God Delusion, Dawkins dismisses the Problem of Evil by suggesting that God is evil. Which would be an amusing if it were coming from a child, but unfortunately it comes from Ph.D.
January 12th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Religious proponents easily circumvent the Epicurean Paradox by invoking the Afterlife, a post death state of being wherein bad stuff that happens to individuals in the Real World can be dealt with by God using the detailed records he keeps of all our thoughts and actions. He employs a kind of Points Mean Prizes system, rewarding appropriate behaviour with useful gifts such as Eternal Life. Be sure never to miss a future episode of your favourite TV soap just because you’ve been unlucky enough to croak in your sleep. Imagine that!
On the downside, evildoers can expect an eternity of Hellfire, a hot and uncomfortable option for the hapless ne’er do well, who must be prepared to smoulder interminably, probably without being allowed to watch soaps to distract himself from the pain. The only very slightly wicked might possibly be afforded the concession of wearing fire resistant undergarments at weekends, although I’m not absolutely sure on that one.
This regime of redressing Earthly imbalances of Good an Evil in the hereafter
obviates the need for the deity to put in an appearance in the real world, thus providing philosophers with the entertaining does he/doesn,t he exist question, plus the associated paradox. I hope I’ve cleared that one up.
Back on the terrestrial plane, I also approve of civilised governments allowing people to be naughty in their own annoying ways, especially when it affords sane folk the spectacle of clowns like the Klu Klux Klan to scoff at and revile. Those guys seriously need to employ the talents of someone like Spider Man creator Steve Ditko to design their costumes. They’re unlikely to convert many to the cause of pea brained, murderous xenophobia whilst looking like
Casper the Freindly Ghost.
I think Richard Dawkins was basing his character assessment of the Biblical God on the source material, in which the Omnipotent One generally throws his weight around, smites people, sends plagues, drowns nearly everyone in the world and to top it all sends his son down for a bit of human sacrifice. If this doesn’t qualify him as evil exactly, perhaps it would be fair to say he,s hardly the ideal Dad?
January 12th, 2008 at 8:32 am
My own opinion is that the afterlife is only peripheral to the argument from evil.
Sometimes I feel like doing that.
January 12th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
An axis for both forces, good/evil, is required for each to exist.
There is your definition of God.
The impression of God is free will.
The hierarchy of the word ‘benevolent’ is key here also…
‘showing or motivated by 1) sympathy and 2) understanding and 3)generosity’
All 3 words in the definition have different meanings.
1) the ability to enter into, understand, or share somebody else’s feelings
2) the ability to perceive and explain the meaning or the nature of somebody or something
3) the willingness to give freely
A ‘benevolent’ God by its own definition must allow all forces ample consideration.
For every action there is a reaction
http://warrior.jdspc.com/2007/12/emotional_degrees.html
The assumption that God is ‘pro-good’ is arrogant.
A government must operate by the same tenets.
As my feelings go towards sports; if you don’t like a team running up the score on you, do something to stop them.
At some point, civility must reign supreme.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:00 am
How do we define evil? Is it a species specific product so that to a bluebottle
for instance, fly spray or a well aimed rolled up newspaper could be seen to
represent the height of evil, or are we going for the anthropocentric viewpoint
that our definition only encompasses bad stuff that happens to humans? It
seems arrogant to assume that God should favour the latter view.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:22 am
“Evil” can only be defined relative the the system in which it is mentioned. So when Christians speak of evil, they are speaking of that which is evil by the Christian definition.
This means that conflicting definitions of evil will exist. In a hedonist system, sex with several women would be “good”, not “evil”. In a Christian system, that same sex would be “fornication” and as such “evil”.
January 13th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Again, evil is…..
The defintion does not require absolution.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Evil is…
we all know what evil is……………
January 13th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Evil could be defined as having a bad hair day, or even more eviler a bad hair
life, before finding you’ve mislaid your car keys and consequently are sure to
miss a concert by Rap star Ice Lolly that starts in ten minutes, for which
you’ve paid an exorbitant ticket price. A benevolent creator would never allow
this situation to arise, not least because he probably prefers classic pop and
rock from the 60’s and 70’s like Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell and would have
stopped Rap music at it’s inception with a few well judged thunderbolts.
The above example typifies the problem of evil in the human world but what
about the realm of the insect where it could be argued that many species far
more numerically impressive than us big brained primates worship a Supreme
Arthropod called Arthur. Under this creepy crawly belief system, the plight of
the bluebottle anxiously observing the thousandfold approach of a rolled up
Daily Mail through his compound eyes assumes a sense of pathos of which
us humans in our pest controlling zeal are oblivious.
Although it cannot be proved that any arthropods espouse this Arthurian
faith who are we to deny it and where does the burden of proof lie?
January 13th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Joni Mitchell? Blasphemy. He’s definitely a trance addict, none of that Joni Mitchell crap.
January 13th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Trance, what’s that? No, he’s definitely a Joni fan and particularly relishes
her chiming guitar sounds on the Hejira album accompanied by Jaco’s
sinuous bass playing.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
But he’s got a point with Steely Dan… fabulous guitar sound!
Benevolence would be consistent…. Joni Mitchell = not so consistent.
January 13th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
‘A benevolent creator would never allow
this situation to arise’ by dave
God is not a bouncer….but yeah, jaco is right seat of God!
January 14th, 2008 at 11:57 am
If god did not allow evil in the world, this would have an effect in the realm of
TV drama even more devastating than the current Hollywood writers strike.
How many unmemorable reality based made for TV movies, usually
starring Lindsay Wagner portraying one woman’s harrowing struggle to cope
with a less than ideal domestic situation could never have been made if god
had placed a ban on evil? The relevant source material would simply be
unavailable. Take for instance the 1996 TV movie, “A Mother’s Instinct” in
which Lindsay plays a woman who marries a man who is the father of two
small boys. When she begins to ask questions about his past, he disappears
with the boys. She then discovers that the boys’ mother is still alive and the
two “wives”, join forces and set out to track down him and the boys.
Now under the almighty’s draconian, “No Evil” rule, the father’s bigamous
and decietful behavoir would never have been allowed to take place, resulting
in the denial to millions of mainly female afternoon viewers of a fairly
mediocre example of TV film drama to have on in the background while
they do the ironing.
Where would that leave movies such as “The Godfather and”Goodfella’s
with their graphic depictions of evil behaviour? Clearly, Ford Coppola and
Scorcese would be reduced to directing dramatic productions of the same
sanitised quality as shows like “The Waltons”.
So in conclusion, maybe this is why god allows evil in the world. Like us
he enjoys a good film and decided in his wisdom that a mixture of good and
evil would make for far more interesting TV and movie drama when his
favourite
developed the relevant technology.
January 14th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
favourite species developed the relevant technology. It only remains for us
to ponder whether the almighty chooses to view our broadcasts on cable or
via satellite, or does he employ some other kind of method, possibly taking
advantage of his famed omnipotent, omnipresent nature and in this way
avoiding paying a subscription charge.
January 14th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Oops! I submitted the first bit of the above post accidentally before I’d
finished.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:06 am
The obvious problem is statement 1. “If evil exists”. This is an example of the logical error of arguing from a false premise. Evil is a human assigned characteristic of behaviour. At one point, Nelson Mandela is an evil terrorist. At another he is a next-to-Christ like figure of goodness. He’s the same person. Evil is in the mind of the beholder, not an abstract entity identifiable by a third party armed with a definition.
It’s a problem caused by confusing the existence of real things with identifying and labelling characteristics. Just because you can apply a label to a group of things, doesn’t mean that the label is useful or even helpful.
For example, looking out of the window, I can see several groupings. One is a group of entities in a thing I’ll call a field. I’ll call the entities “fieldists”. Now I can make up all sots of stories about fieldists. Until some of them unexpectedly fly away to a different field, and some of them are herded to a second field and some swim up and down river. The label wasn’t useful. It was an artifact of my perceptions.
Theists *need* evil, so that their god can be defined as being as being in opposition. However, there is no reason for there to be something evil - it’s just a convenient fiction. Non-theists don’t need a label called evil. They may need to identify morally reprehensible activities that they can legislate against, or recognise as being wrong - but that doesn’t need an appeal to “evil”.
Arguing anything beyond point 1 becomes fatuous.
Cheers, JezC.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
That’s much too broad of a statement. It ignores the fact that each value system (hedonism, Christianity, utilitarianism, etc, etc) has its own definition of evil.
Theists? You are giving theism way too much credit. Your statement assumes that theists are the only ones with moral values. Humanists and secularists have moral values, too. An agnostic person can define murder as evil just as validly as a Christian can. Perhaps even more so, because the Christian defines murder as evil simply by virtue of the Bible saying so. An agnostic calls murder evil for the very valid rationality that murder is destructive to the human race, causes pain, and begets violence.
Are you suggesting that philosophers should abandon the use of the words “good” and “evil”? Philosophers have spoken in terms of “good” and “evil” for thousands of years. Aristotle did, and did so without any regard to theism.
I fear you’ve just lost sight of the big picture and are obsessing over semantics. Words are just phonetic representations of concepts, and not worthy of much debate themselves. Concepts, on the other hand, are interesting.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
John,
In your book review on Closing of the Liberal Mind you mention “evil Kant” as one of the philosophers you have studied. What would you then be basing his evilness on… the outcome of his theories? I was curious why you labeled him as such. I have thought that some of his theories are evil in that their logical outcomes are bad for humanity… they will infringe on an individual’s freedom or justify one to violate another’s freedom.
January 18th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Hi Kerrin,
Kant’s anti-individualist moral theory could be seen as an impetus to National Socialism of Hitler. Even without Hitler, it’s evil.
May 5th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
John,
Wouldn’t Kant’s position on causality be the same as a strong-agnostic?
Also didn’t he appose direct democracy on the grounds that it violated the individual’s freedom?