The Problem of Evil, Christians, and Inconsistency

[robvalue]

Judges 9:23

Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech.

How you gonna spin that one? Hmm.

God creates evil, screws with free will and incites treachery all in one sentence.

For his amusement?

[Mudhammam]

Please defend your knowledge claim that: 'God's will is unable to oversee the abolition of grotesque evil in the world.'

I'm sure you're familiar with the quandary Epicurus (I believe it was) formulated; God may be able to abolish grotesque evil but as he evidently chooses not to, his omnibenevolence loses its essential character. You might hold it out on faith that all forms of evil serve a greater purpose, and are necessary for his grand aims, but then this God also begins to appear much weaker than often proclaimed because if omnipotent, evil would not be any requirement to achieve whatever purpose the deity wills.

What is meant by 'best-of-all-possible-worlds? Please explain this premise.

Who is making the argument that a world in which our wills are limited would necessitate a less than best-of-all-possible-world?

Pretty classic argument in philosophy/theology, popularized by Leibniz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all...ble_worlds

[orangebox21]

I'm sure you're familiar with the quandary Epicurus (I believe it was) formulated; God may be able to abolish grotesque evil but as he evidently chooses not to, his omnibenevolence loses its essential character.

So that I can understand your argument, how are you defining omnibenevolence?

The hidden assumption in the above quandary is that having the power to do something necessitates doing it.


Here is a good discussion of the problem of evil as an argument against God.

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For full article go here.

Statement of the Problem

What we want to do is begin to examine the logical version of the intellectual problem of evil. The key to this argument is the atheist claim that it is impossible that God and the suffering in the world coexist. The atheist is basically saying that the following two statements are logically inconsistent with each other:

1. God is all-powerful and all-good.

2. Suffering exists.

The proponent of the logical version of the problem of evil is saying that these two propositions cannot both be true. The obvious question that arises when we put the problem in this way is, why think that these two propositions are logically inconsistent with each other? After all, one is not the negation of the other. So there is no explicit contradiction between these two statements. The atheist must think that these are somehow implicitly contradictory. But in that case, he must have some hidden assumptions which would bring out this implicit contradiction and make it explicit. The question is: what are those hidden assumptions?

They seem to be two in number:

3. If God is all-powerful, then He can create any world that He wants.

4. If God is all-loving, then He would prefer a world without suffering.

The idea here is that God is all-powerful, and therefore He can create any world that He wants. He is all-good, and therefore He prefers a world without suffering. Thus, God is capable of creating, and He prefers, a world without suffering. Therefore, suffering does not exist. But that contradicts #2 – that suffering exists – so it shows that there is a contradiction between God and suffering. Given that suffering exists, it follows that God does not exist. Given the presence of suffering, we know that there is no God.

Solution of the Problem

What might be said in response to this logical version of the problem of suffering? In order for this argument to be logically valid, both of the hidden assumptions need to be necessarily true. The question is, are they each necessarily true? Let’s think about them.

There is No Proven Inconsistency Between God and Evil

Think about #3, that if God is all-powerful, then He can create any world that He wants. Is that necessarily true? I think that, as the earlier question has suggested, it is not necessarily true, if it is possible that people have freedom of the will. It is logically impossible to make someone do something freely. That is as logically impossible as making a married bachelor or a round square. So God’s being all-powerful does not mean that He can do the logically impossible. Indeed, there really aren’t any such things as the logically impossible. Those are just self-contradictory combination of words, like “square circle” or “married bachelor.” So God does not necessarily have the ability to create just any world that He wants, if it is possible that human beings have genuine freedom of the will.

If the unbeliever insists at this point that an omnipotent God, an all-powerful God, most certainly does have the power to do the logically impossible, then the problem of evil just evaporates automatically. Because then He can bring it about that both #1 and #2 are true, even though they are logically contradictory to each other! So the atheist shoots himself in the foot, if he says God can do the logically impossible because He is omnipotent. Then there is no problem posed by suffering, since God can bring it about that these two logically incompatible propositions are both true.

If it is possible that people have free will, it turns out that #3 is not necessarily true because there may be possible worlds in which the people don’t freely do the things that God would prefer for them to do. They can refuse to do what God desires. So there might be any number of possible worlds that are not feasible for God to create because the people in them would not do the right thing. In fact, when you reflect on it, it is possible that in any world of free persons which has as much good as the actual world does, there would also be this much suffering. There is no guarantee whatsoever that in some other world of free persons with this much good, there would be less suffering.

Notice that this conjecture doesn’t need to be true. It doesn’t need to be probable. It just needs to be possible. As long as that is possible, it shows that it is not necessarily true that if God is all-powerful, He can create just any world that He wants. So assumption #3 is not necessarily true, and therefore the atheist argument is logically invalid.

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You might hold it out on faith that all forms of evil serve a greater purpose, and are necessary for his grand aims, but then this God also begins to appear much weaker than often proclaimed because if omnipotent, evil would not be any requirement to achieve whatever purpose the deity wills.

You've asserted that evil may both serve a greater purpose and are necessary of for God's grand aims. It is true that I may hold out on faith that evil is not needless, in that it may serve a purpose. I don't know that I agree that evil is necessary. Just because something is 'not needless' does that necessitate that it is necessary?

What is meant by 'best-of-all-possible-worlds? Please explain this premise.

Who is making the argument that a world in which our wills are limited would necessitate a less than best-of-all-possible-world?

Pretty classic argument in philosophy/theology, popularized by Leibniz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all...ble_worlds

If God chooses to create, freely by His will, does that necessitate that He would create the best-of-all-possible-worlds?

Secondly, let me think aloud a bit.

An eternal world is a better world than a non-eternal world.
The world we live in is not an eternal world.
Therefore the world we live in is not the best-of-all-possible-worlds.

Theologically speaking and to the best of my knowledge I'm not sure the Bible teaches that the created world is the best-of-all-possible-worlds. It says the world was created 'good'. Does good mean best?

[Mudhammam]

So that I can understand your argument, how are you defining omnibenevolence?

Wholly good, "good" as a term that is not simply honorific and arbitrary, but also has some meaningful relationship to human conceptions of goodness, which typically (at least according to Kant as I get the impression) involves the notions of happiness and virtue.

The hidden assumption in the above quandary is that having the power to do something necessitates doing it.

That's not a hidden assumption at all; it's part and parcel with the conception of the highest (or whole and complete) goodness, that if you have it within your power to relieve a person's suffering (which in this instance you're at the very least indirectly responsible for causing), and choose not to, for no apparently good (that is, rational, or internally consistent) reason, your quality of character is less than the highest conceivable good.

The free will defense was already shown to be unsatisfactory in the OP, so I don't really get the point of your restatement of it.

You've asserted that evil may both serve a greater purpose and are necessary of for God's grand aims. It is true that I may hold out on faith that evil is not needless, in that it may serve a purpose. I don't know that I agree that evil is necessary. Just because something is 'not needless' does that necessitate that it is necessary?

If it is not necessary, and it wouldn't be for an omnipotent deity who has no obligation to causal relations, then you're talking about gratuitous, capricious evil, evil that is neither required nor demanded by God to achieve whatever purpose he might will and yet allowed to continue on anyhow.

If God chooses to create, freely by His will, does that necessitate that He would create the best-of-all-possible-worlds?

Secondly, let me think aloud a bit.

An eternal world is a better world than a non-eternal world.
The world we live in is not an eternal world.
Therefore the world we live in is not the best-of-all-possible-worlds.

Theologically speaking and to the best of my knowledge I'm not sure the Bible teaches that the created world is the best-of-all-possible-worlds. It says the world was created 'good'. Does good mean best?

Yet you would have us 1) find compatiblity between and 2) infer the best-of-all-possible-gods, or the something of which nothing greater can be conceived, with and from a world that resembles nothing of the sort?

[StealthySkeptic]

"But, ah!" the Christian is likely to retort, "in heaven, we choose to be good all the time! Our freedom is not impugned because we have made our choice on earth, since that is the purpose of our free will here, that it allows us to choose God, and that makes heaven an even better possible domain to dwell in! Therefore, no one in heaven will want to do evil!"

Well, if that was offered as a rebuttal, then I would respond, "Why couldn't God have made Earth like that?" After all, if a logical state can exist where people can a.) know for a fact that God exists, b.) have free will, and c.) only choose to do good, then clearly you can have free will without having evil exist! This is about as close to an Achilles' heel for the free will defense as one can find.

[Mudhammam]

"But, ah!" the Christian is likely to retort, "in heaven, we choose to be good all the time! Our freedom is not impugned because we have made our choice on earth, since that is the purpose of our free will here, that it allows us to choose God, and that makes heaven an even better possible domain to dwell in! Therefore, no one in heaven will want to do evil!"

Well, if that was offered as a rebuttal, then I would respond, "Why couldn't God have made Earth like that?" After all, if a logical state can exist where people can a.) know for a fact that God exists, b.) have free will, and c.) only choose to do good, then clearly you can have free will without having evil exist! This is about as close to an Achilles' heel for the free will defense as one can find.

Exactly. I'm surprised that point isn't made more often. A) and B) taken alone don't pose any of the real difficulties that believers allege they would... as evidenced by numerous examples in their own holy books.

[Neo-Scholastic]

...if a logical state can exist where people can a.) know for a fact that God exists, b.) have free will, and c.) only choose to do good, then clearly you can have free will without having evil exist!

Free will in heaven is not even close to being a problem:

1) Only choosing to do good is an acquired habit not a compulsion.
2) Heaven has various levels (mansions) based on the amount of good someone is receiving at any given time.
3) Someone can exercise free will by choosing between various good actions.

[RobbyPants]

Free will in heaven is not even close to being a problem:

1) Only choosing to do good is an acquired habit not a compulsion.
2) Heaven has various levels (mansions) based on the amount of good someone is receiving at any given time.
3) Someone can exercise free will by choosing between various good actions.

Then why isn't earth that way? Why don't we only choose good actions?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Then why isn't earth that way? Why don't we only choose good actions?

Better question...why don't you choose only good actions?

In all honesty, I don't understand the objection. Being virtuous is a skill, like any other skill, that improves with practice. It's like wanting to be good at anything else, like algebra. Once someone learns algebra do they then choose to be bad at it?

[Diablo]

Then why isn't earth that way? Why don't we only choose good actions?

Better question...why don't you choose only good actions?

Go to Amazon.
Buy 'The Selfish Gene' by Dawkins.
Read it.