The Problem of Evil

Hi Everyone, i'm currently studying philosophy in college and wanted to throw this essay up for you guys to have a goo at, its about the philosophical reasoning behind evil (the module it is from is philosophy of religion so thats whats with the God theme!) its a good topic to read on when you a bit stoned and i know its mental long so i really don't expect people to read the whole thing! It got me a really good mark so i hope you like it!

Question: “God either wants to remove evil and cannot, or can and does not want to, or does not want to and cannot, or wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot he is impotent; if he can and does not he is envious; if he does not want to and cannot he is envious and impotent; if he wants to and can, why does evil exist?”
Answer: John Stott[1] has said that "the fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith." The question that Epicurus poses has plagued philosophers and theologians through the eras. It is an incredible test to Christians and people of Religion to accept and blindly follow knowing that murders are taking place everyday, the news is a string of events that happen daily that many deem to be evil. Why does an all loving God allow his ‘children' to suffer?
First I feel it is important to explain the difference between Moral Evil and Natural Evil[2]. Moral evil results from the actions of free creatures. Murder, rape and theft are examples. Natural evil results from natural processes such as earthquakes and floods.
Socrates mentions the voice of his ‘daimon[3]', an inner voice which he followed that kept him away from evil. Socrates maintained that it is not possible to do evil voluntarily if we know it is evil. If we do evil it is through ignorance; if we know what the good is we will do good. Perhaps, as Socrates loved reason and knowledge, we may only do evil through pure ignorance. Lack of knowledge is what causes evil in the world, and not that a divine power has placed evil into the world, after all the divine could only do good. The divine do not want evil in the world, however through free will, allow people the search for truth and knowledge as a way to search for good as opposed to evil ignorance.
Even from before the time of St. Augustine another response to the problem of evil had already been present within the developing Christian tradition. This has basis in the thought of the early Greek-speaking Fathers of the Church, perhaps the most important of whom was St. Irenaeus[4]. He distinguished two stages of the creation of the human race. In the first stage human beings were brought into existence as intelligent animals endowed with the capacity for immense moral and spiritual development. In the second stage, human beings through their free will make themselves into the divine likeness.

Alvin Plantinga says that creatures that are free to love God must also be free to hate or ignore Him. Creatures that are free to follow God's Will must also be free to reject it. And when people act in ways outside the will of God, great evil and suffering is the ultimate result. This line of thinking is known as the "free will defense" concerning the problem of evil.
Linda Zagzebski points out that in his Theodicy Leibniz distinguishes between God's antecedent will, which wills that humans always do what is good and his consequent will, which wills to permit us to sin. According to Leibniz, God's consequent will “Tends towards the production of as many goods that can be put together” and permits some evils as they are necessary for the greater good.
However these arguments are only viable if a God does exist. Sextus Empiricist poses a possible answer to Epicurus's argument in the Outlines of Pyrrhonism. His essentials concerning the problem of evil are often outlined in the following:
“Evil exists. If God knows about it and wants to remove it, he must be unable to do so. If he knows about it and is able to remove it, he must be unwilling. If he is willing and able to remove evil, he must be ignorant of its existence. But God is omniscient, omnipotent, and completely benevolent. Therefore, God does not exist.”
Sextus poses the argument that God must not exist if evil is to exist.
J.J. Haldane says in his book Atheism and Theism that it is a fact of human experience that suffering has immense potential for growth. Anyone who has lived through painful illness, emotional distress, anxiety and depression, and other familiar terrors and woes, knows that these give rise to ‘spiritual' challenges which, if met, leave one a stronger and wiser person. He also says, to put it paradoxically, people are often grateful to have suffered harms. How can someone be so gracious in the face of evil as to forgive the murderer of their only child? ‘By God's grace alone is it made possible' – is the Christian answer.
This I do not agree with. How can one, who has had their only child killed face the murderer and follow blindly in their faith, so much as to forgive the murderer. I believe that this is almost impossible. If one is to follow the Christian faith it is said that God allows evil. How can one believe that the God is all loving and yet at the same time allows evil to occur?
If God is omniscient and benevolent would he not stop evil? Therefore I must conclude that I am in agreement with Sextus. However as a Catholic this also challenges my faith. I believe that a God exists, and as Plantinga says I should have choice to either refuse or accept the views that this God poses towards his believers, but when evil is concerned I believe I am at a loss as to whether I should follow a God who allows evil, in his omnipotence, to exist.

[1] John Stott, Basic Christianity Published 1986 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing England

[2] Edward Craig, The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia. – ( England, Routledge Publishers, 2005.)

[3] Kolakowski says that this was not Socrates own creation as if it was why should it have any authority, but a moral force of divine origin.

[4] Harold S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York:
Shocken Publishing, 1981)

 

Thank you thats much appreciated and i'm equally grateful that you actually took the time to bother reading it!
OK here goes at an attempt to answer you!

Yup 1. "Natural evil results from natural processes such as earthquakes and floods" unnatural evil is also regarded as moral evil which is the use of ones own free will (hehe links in i know) to harm another purposefully. Thats what every book i have ever read distinguishes between the two.

2. I don't think that we have the mind capacity to understand this all seeing all knowing God, like we are mere mortals we do not understand what infinity is, our minds purely cannot comprehend what it is. best example is to think of the size of the universe. Not only that but this omniscient god exists outside of time which means that he/she is outisde of time completely and is neither infinte nor mortal. our puney mortal minds cannot grasp that concept! and so no i don't believe that any number of words will ever "bridge the gap between intellectual comprehension and experiential understanding of God"

 

thats off cure for pain right? great tune..

I see your point now bout the unnatural and natural good, this is just off the top of my head but i sorta think that natural good means its innate, like if a mother didn't love her child then she wouldn't bother looking after it. natural good is kinda like the mechanical good that occurs in us when we see another in pain and we have that feeling of wanting to help them. i think unnatural good is going out of ones way to help somebody that doesn't necessarily benefit them but is still a good thing to do. Psychologists are always saying that relationships between people depend on benefits like what can be benefited from knowing this person what are the perks of it. to a mother raising her child is a benefit cos its continuing on the race and it can look after her when the time comes that she needs it and vice versa. then theres unnatural good when people go out of they're way to do something to help another without any immediate benefits for themselves. kinda like the complete gegenteil of natural and unnatural evil, natural occurs without having any real input into it and unnatural occurs when we purposefully do something!

hehe very very true, how would we know anything if we didn't just jump straight in!

 

Like i said earlier if you are to take this from a religious stadn point then it could be said that god allows these events to happen as a test of human courage and morality..

but what i think is the main idea to keep in mind if your gonna say that these disasters are the product of some revengeful god you have to say that all evils in the world are a product of such. like someone killing perhaps ten or twenty people could have been in the design of gods plan, if it is then how could one possibly say that god is omniscient and benevolent. instead the distinguishing between the two natural evil and unnatural evil, natural evil is the product of the way the earth was formed not due to anyone high above us causing this to happen, and god can't intervene to save the people cos if that were to happen god would have to step in at all times to save people and what would we learn from that! trial and error my friends is what allows us to continue our adaptation to environments!