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I. The Theist's Dilemma.
A. If God is perfectly loving and all-good,
then God must wish to abolish evil.
B. If God is omnipotent (all-powerful),
then he must be able to abolish evil.
C. Is God willing to prevent evil but not
able? Then he is not omnipotent.
D. Is God able but not willing? Then
he is not completely good and benevolent.
E. Is God both able and willing?
Then, whence evil?
F. Since evil does exist, it follows that
God cannot be both omnipotent and perfectly good or perfectly loving.
G. In addition, there are some other rules
related to good and evil:
(a) good is always opposed
to evil;
(b) the good thing always
eliminated the evil thing as far as it is able
II. If the world is the result of mindless working of purely natural forces (as naturalism affirms), then it is not surprising that the world is the way it is.
A. On the other hand, if the world which we inhabit is the creation of a God who is all good, omnipotent, and omniscient, then it is surprising that there is this much evil in the world.
B. We would expect a perfectly-good being to create a perfectly good world.
III. A list of some proposed solutions to the problem of evil.
A. God is not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not omni-benevolent, or not the sole creator of all that exists.
If God is not omnipotent, why pray for things that are out of His control? If God is omnipotent, how can He not know everything? If God is not all good, why is He worthy of worship? Are you worshiping Him simply out of fear of punishment or hell? If God is not the sole creator of all that exists, then who is the creator? (Did God create Himself? If not, He is not the creator of all that exists.)
B. Evil does not really exist (it is an illusion, or it is the "absence of good" but not a positive thing at all).
Tell this to the child who goes hungry every night in Africa--or any other third world country--and dies of malnutrition. Tell the woman who was raped that the violation of her body was actually the "absence of good." Find a relative or friend of someone who was murdered who thinks what happened was simply a lack of goodness in the act.
C. You could not recognize good unless there exists evil with which to contract it (epistemological claim).
This is an omnipotent deity. A deity that is omnipotent should be able to create a world where evil does not exist, while at the same time allowing human beings to recognize good.
D. Good cannot exist without evil (ontological claim).
If someone lives all their life in Hawaii, and enjoys the weather, do they have to see the weather in other cities, states and countries to know their weather is better? And again, even if the above claim is true ("good cannot exist without evil"), an omnipotent deity is perfectly capable of creating a world without any evil in it.
E. Evil is necessary because it is a means or a tool to accomplish good; i.e., the universe is better with some evil in it than it would be if there were no evil in it.
This is like saying "It is great there is crime because it allows us to employ legislators to create new laws; allows police to enforce those laws; and provides jobs to hundreds of thousands of prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges."
F. God allows some evil in the world so He can use it for our moral training, for our "soul building" or character building.
Why not simply give these attributes to us at birth? Why subject us to evil?
G. Evil in the world exists as a consequence of the "falleness of man" due to an original sin.
Sounds as though God's method of judgment is quite unconstitutional. God believes in "double jeopardy" for a so-called "sin" that no person is responsible for--except humankind's supposed "first ancestor."
If a prosecutor were to prosecute a person for the crimes of his father, grandfather, or immediate friend or relative, the district attorney would remove this psychopath immediately, and he or she would be tried and convicted for violating the federal and state constitution's prohibition of double jeopardy, if not abuse of the city or state or federal court system, and be subjected to civil judgment as well.
Why do theists, then, worship a God who punishes them for actions that are out of their control? Why do we worship a God who punishes unfairly and, with the same applied reasoning and tounge, condemn the prosecutor who unfairly prosecutes? It seems rational that the same society that praises an unjust god should hail the actions of an unfair, unjustly, unconstitutional-minded prosecutor.
H. Evil in the world exists because of the devil or Satan, so God is not responsible and cannot be blamed.
God is supposed to have unlimited power. The devil, or Satan, according to theists and the Bible, does not have unlimited power. Therefore, to say the devil is responsible for evil is as irrational as saying your baby sister can win an arm wrestling contest against Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I. Evil exists because of human free will.
What about natural evil? Earthquakes, volcanos, tornados, fires, floods, lightning, storms, asteroids, avalanches, blizzards, landslides, and typhoons have nothing to do with human free will. Those things can be blamed on God because He allowed (or caused) those things to happen. You can blame human free will if you wish, but if you think about it--a perfectly good God would have also made it possible for you to choose right over wrong one-hundred (100) percent of the time.
J. God's "goodness" is not the same thing as human goodness and cannot be judged by human standards.
If God's "goodness" is not the same as human goodness, who is to say God is good at all? Why not say he is bad? If you cannot describe the character of God's actions, it is as sane to call God "ugaerika" as it is to call him "good"; in both cases the person does not know what God's personality trait is.
The dictionary's definition of "good" is: virtuous; right; commendable. It can hardly be said that God is "omnibeneveloent" (always virtous, right, and commendable) when he created a world that has this much natural and human evil.
E-mail: eternalevil@hotmail.com
Michael Gordon