There are two ways the problem of evil or the argument from evil has been presented. The first type of problem is
called the logical problem of or argument from evil. The argument basically goes that an
omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good (OOG) god exists. This OOG god would naturally know about all
evil, have the power to stop evil, and, being perfectly good, have the will to
stop all evil that is not necessary for a greater good or for stopping a
greater evil. Yet, unnecessary or
gratuitous evil exists. Therefore, there
must not be a god, or at least not an OOG god as espoused by the monotheistic
religions of the world. This argument
played out most definitively between J.L. Mackie and Alvin Plantinga decades
ago.
In short, Mackie
essentially presented the argument as I have just laid out.[1] Alvin Plantinga responds with his Free Will
Defense. It is important to note that
Plantinga responds with a defense and not a theodicy. A defense merely blocks an argument, that is,
it shows that the argument does not hold.
On the other hand, a theodicy attempts to give an explanation for
evil. Plantinga defines a few terms in
his defense that are important.
Plantinga defines omnipotence basically as power to do all that can
logically be done.[2] This is opposed to Mackie’s assertion that
there is no limit to what an omnipotent being could do. Second, Plantinga makes clear that what he
means by freewill is libertarian or incompatibilst freewill. He goes on to
challenge Mackie’s premise that an OOG would stop all unnecessary evil by
arguing that humans could have been granted freewill by God. If it is the case that humans have freewill,
they can choose to do evil things that God could not logically stop without
taking away their free will. In this
way, God can be omnipotent and perfectly good and allow for human evil since it
is not logically possible to both grant freewill and restrict choice or negate
the effect of human choices. Therefore,
by extension, it is not possible for God to create a world that has human freewill
and no possibility for moral evils.
Plantinga
extends his freewill defense to apply to natural evil by stating that it is
possible, but not necessarily true, that natural evil is caused by nonhuman
free agents such as demons. It is
important to remember here that Plantinga is only presenting a defense and
not necessarily suggesting that demons are, in fact, the cause of natural
evils.
The logical
problem of evil was essentially set aside soon after the exchange between Mackie
and Plantinga, with Plantinga providing a formidable defense against the
logical problem. However, a second form
of the problem of evil still remains as the evidential problem of evil. The evidential problem of evil does not
suggest that there is a logical contradiction between theistic belief and evil,
but asks whether given the evil in the world the existence of an OOG god is probable
or plausible. A simple rendition of the
strongest form is that (1) Gratuitous evil exists. (2) If (OOG) God exists, no
gratuitous evil exists. (3) It is
unlikely that God exists.
William Rowe is
one of the best known proponents of this type of argument. He does not maintain that theistic belief is
inherently irrational, but adheres to what he calls “friendly atheism” and
suggests that atheism is more reasonable than theism, given the gratuitous evil
in the world[3]. Rowe even attempts to present the
reasonableness of theism on a scale from 0 to 1, i.e. 0.1, 0.2, etc.[4] Some theists like Daniel Howard-Snyder and
Michael Bergmann engage William Rowe in this sort of numerical pursuit, but
most use a more traditional approach. I
see this statistical approach as dubious and creating a larger disconnect
between the academic discussion of the problem of evil and the reality of the
problem more so then there already tends to be.
Therefore, I also prefer a more traditional approach to the issue.
A
popular defense against the argument is to attack the premise that there is
indeed gratuitous evil in the world.
Wykstra, Bergmann, and Howard-Snyder have engaged in the Skeptical
Theist argument which essentially argues that finite humans are not in a position to determine if
there are such instances of gratuitous evil, that is, evil that does not lead
to a greater good or prevent a greater evil.
Skeptical Theists argue that finite humans do not have the ability to
know whether any particular instance of evil has a higher purpose, because they
cannot see all the current and future effects that God is privy to. Therefore, evil does not diminish the
reasonableness of theistic belief. This defense is similar to elements of various "greater good" theodicies that explain evil by suggesting that any evil event is actually necessary for a greater good or to prevent a greater evil.
A valid
criticism of this defensive approach made by Michael Peterson is that it
suggests humanity’s ability to judge the senselessness of evil is not simply
finite, but is generally unreliable. As
a result Peterson takes another defensive approach that challenges the premise
that God would not allow any gratuitous evil.
His defense employs the argument similar to Plantinga’s Free Will
Defense and states that, in short, if God grants humanity free will then it
follows that humans will sometimes commit completely unnecessary moral
evils. Additionally, a world with free
will needs a static medium in which free decisions and actions can be produced. Peterson, like C.S. Lewis, looks to the
nature of the physical world and natural law for such a medium. If nature acts as a system on its own, it is
only natural that at times the system will produce some, what we call, natural evils.
Furthermore, Peterson suggests that not only
does evil in a world described above not make the existence of God less plausible,
the existence of evil can actually be evidence for the existence of God! Given the more sophisticated view of theism
and the type of world God would create, such as with a stable natural existence
and genuine, libertarian freewill, we would expect both moral evils and natural
evils to occur.[5] In fact, it can be argued that the human sense
of morality by which evil is recognized is best explained by a theistic world,
and can be said to be the burden of naturalist philosophers to explain in a
proposed non-theistic world.
[1] Mackie,
J.L. “Evil and Omnipotence” In The
Problem of Evil: Selected Readings, edited by Michael Peterson, 89-90. South
Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991
[2] Plantinga,
Alvin. “The Freewill Defense” In The
Problem of Evil: Selected Readings, edited by Michael Peterson, 108. South
Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991
[4]
William Rowe, Daniel Howard-Snyder, and Michael Bergmann, “Is Evil Evidence
Against Belief in God?”, In Contemporary
Debates in Philosophy of Religion, ed.
M. Peterson and R. VanAaragon, Oxford:
Blackwell (1994), 4
[5]
Michael L. Peterson, “Evil as Evidence for the Existence of God”, 127-8
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