The Problem of Evil Assignment

The Problem of Evil

You may not have heard of the name Kevin Carter, but you’ve probably seen the famous picture he took during the 1993 famine in Sudan. The picture is horrific. A starving child crawls through the bush toward a feeding station. A few yards away, a vulture longingly awaits its soon-to-be-dead prey. This picture captures in a powerful way the reality, horror, and intensity of the suffering and cruelty found in this world. For Carter, the picture won him a Pulitzer Prize. He had risen to the summit of his profession by capturing images of pain and suffering. A few months after winning the Pulitzer, Carter committed suicide. In a note he explained, “The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist.” He had come face-to-face with evil and could not cope with its sting.

The reality of pain and suffering—evil—raises at least three pressing questions for the Christian. First, does the reality of evil in the world show that God doesn’t (or probably doesn’t) exist? Many thoughtful people look at the distribution or amount of evil in the world and conclude on that basis that there is no God. Thus, our first challenge is to consider the strength of the case for atheism given the existence of evil. Second, assuming God does exist, why does he allow pain and suffering? Finally, how does one cope with the reality of evil?

Before we begin, understand that these questions are often regarded as intractable because of a failure to ask preliminary questions. In other words, there is a prior question to our questions, one percolating beneath the surface for the men and women on the streets. The prior question has to do with the nature of happiness. Most today, without much reflection, think of happiness as sensual fulfillment or pleasure. On this understanding of happiness, man’s greatest need is the elimination of pain and suffering (i.e., the opposite of pleasure), and this is found through progress and the ultimate savior: technology. But this “answer” to the problem of pain does not go deep enough. It does not address man’s greatest need. Nor is it really an answer; rather, it is a denial of the problem. Biblically, happiness is not hedonistic, but edenistic. That is, happiness is best understood as a kind of human flourishing where we each become the kind of person God wants us to be (morally and intellectually virtuous) and experience life the way it was meant to be (in intimacy with God and harmony with others) as we live out his purposes. But if true happiness is a kind of human flourishing, then humanity’s greatest need isn’t merely the elimination of pain. The problem goes much deeper—to the core of our being. For humanity is flawed, cracked, broken—to use the old word, sinful—and our deepest need is redemption and restoration. Technology can’t even scratch the surface of our deepest need. An understanding of the nature of happiness and God’s role in such happiness locates the problem of evil—and it is a problem—within its proper context, a context we’ll revisit at the end of the chapter. Now, let’s consider our three pressing questions.

The problem associated with our first pressing question deals with what is called the intellectual problem of evil. The intellectual problem of evil is concerned with providing a rational explanation of the coexistence of God and evil and comes in two versions. The first version, the logical problem of evil, argues that the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good God is incompatible with the reality of evil. If successful, such an argument would show, assuming that evil exists, that God’s existence is impossible. A second version of the intellectual problem of evil, the evidential problem of evil, tries to show that the coexistence of God and evil are highly improbable.

In addressing the issues pertinent to the evidential problem, our second pressing question comes into focus: what, if any, are the reasons for God to allow pain and suffering? Moreover, can we know God’s reasons for some or all instances of evil? Our third pressing question deals with what has been called the emotional problem of evil and concerns how to comfort someone who is experiencing evil. By clearly distinguishing the kinds of questions asked with respect to pain and suffering, it will become easier to identify the root cause of someone’s unbelief. It could be, as William Lane Craig suggests, that for most people their unbelief is born out of a rejection of God in the face of intense personal suffering rather than a refutation of God via intellectual argument. If so, then a more pastoral response would be in order. If, on the other hand, the root cause of the unbelief is intellectual, then the response will be more philosophical. We begin by exploring the logical problem of evil.

figure 9.1 The Different Versions of the Problem of Evil

The Logical Problem of Evil

A set of statements is logically inconsistent when it is impossible for them all to be true at the same time. For example, consider the following statements:

(1) Jim Bob is a bachelor

and

(2) Suzy is married to Jim Bob.

Given the meanings of the words “bachelor” and “married,” these two statements are clearly inconsistent, assuming “Jim Bob” refers to the same guy at the same time. However, the inconsistency isn’t always obvious, or at least it isn’t for those who don’t understand what the words “bachelor” and “married” mean. Sometimes the contradiction needs to be made explicit. To do so, what is needed is some other statement—a statement that is necessarily true—that entails, along with a statement from the original pair, the denial of the other statement from the original pair. The following statement should do the trick:

(3) A bachelor is an unmarried male.

The conjunction of (1) and (3) renders (2) impossible.

Historically, many atheists have argued that there is a similar logical inconsistency between the statements

(4) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good

and

(5) There is evil in the world.

Given the obvious reality of evil in the world, statement (5) is exceedingly difficult to deny. Thus, if there is a logical inconsistency between (4) and (5), and (5) is clearly true, then (4) must be false. Thus, we will have found a proof that God doesn’t exist. In the case of Jim Bob and Suzy, we didn’t really need to go to the trouble of proving that (1) and (2) are logically inconsistent because we can just see that they are, given the widely understood notion of what it means to be a bachelor. With respect to (4) and (5), the inconsistency is not obvious. Thus we must find some additional statement or statements that render the contradiction apparent.

One of the most prominent proponents of the logical problem of evil was J. L. Mackie, who suggested the needed additions “are that good is opposed to evil, in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can, and that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do.” Following Mackie, we might add:

(6) A good being always eliminates evil as far as it can,

and

(7) There are no limits to what an omnipotent being can do.

As long as (6) and (7) are necessarily true, it seems we have found our inconsistent set, for the conjunction of (4) with (6) and (7) renders (5), the reality of evil in the world, impossible. The result for the believer in God is catastrophic: either deny the obvious truth of (5) or surrender commitment to (4).

The problem when considering Mackie is that neither (6) nor (7) is necessarily true, and thus the logical problem of evil fails. As Alvin Plantinga points out in his free will defense, (6) is not necessarily true since a wholly good being might have a morally sufficient reason to permit evil to occur. Further, (7) is not necessarily true because the reality of human freedom might make it impossible for God to bring about a world as morally good as this world without the presence of evil. As Plantinga puts it:

A world containing creatures who are sometimes significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all.… To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, he must create creatures capable of moral evil; and he cannot leave these creatures free to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. God did in fact create significantly free creatures; but some of them went wrong in the exercise of their freedom: this is the source of moral evil. The fact that these creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God’s omnipotence nor against his goodness; for he could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by excising the possibility of moral good.

As a result of Plantinga’s influential work, the prospect of proving a logical incompatibility between the reality of an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God and the reality of evil in this world is significantly diminished, if not entirely hopeless.

Before setting the logical argument aside, let’s examine a popular reply to Plantinga’s free will defense: Couldn’t God create free but morally perfect individuals, individuals who always choose the good? The suggestion is that since God is omnipotent, he can create any world he wants, including a world where people always freely choose the good. Unfortunately, even an omnipotent God cannot create any world he wants (e.g., God cannot create a world full of married bachelors). If people have free will, they may refuse to cooperate with God. Thus, there are a number of worlds that God cannot create because people in them wouldn’t comply with God’s desires. In fact, for all we know, it’s possible that there are no worlds in which free creatures always do what God wants. If so, then there are no worlds with free but morally perfect individuals, and the “free but perfect” objection fails.

Figure 9.2—Freedom and Determinism

Plantinga’s free will defense relies on a conception of freedom called incompatibilism (it is also called, more positively, libertarian freedom): freedom is incompatible with being determined. Thus, as a libertarianly free creature, I am the ultimate source of my actions and decisions and often (if not always) I have genuine alternate possibilities from which to choose. Alternatively, compatibilism holds that freedom is compatible with being determined: even if my actions and decisions are determined by either the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe (physical determinism) or God (theological determinism), as long as I am not coerced, I am free.

Paul Gould, Travis Dickinson, and Keith Loftin, Stand Firm: Apologetics and the Brilliance of the Gospel (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2018), 145–150.