Our assignment was to come up with an argument against the problem of evil.
It was definitely a good way to dive into the course. I spent a lot of time
thinking about the problem and reading up on arguments that others had come up
with.
I think I did a decent job considering the minimal amount of instruction we
received prior to the assignment and my rusty essay-writing skills.
Christian G. Warden
Word Count: 1058
In
Evil and Omnipotence, J. L. Mackie summarizes the problem of
evil to show that the theist's belief in the existence of God is
irrational. Not only is reason unable to prove the existence of God,
but the beliefs of the theist are in direct conflict with each other.
The
problem of evil argues that, because of the nature of God and the
existence of evil, God cannot exist. The main beliefs regarding God
with respect to the problem of evil are that God is omnipotent and
omni-benevolent. Though not explicitly stated by Mackie, it is
generally accepted that God's omnipotence subsumes his omniscience;
that is, there are no situations over which God could not have
control due to his ignorance thereof. The conflict arises because,
in spite of God's all-powerful and all-good nature, evil exists.
If
God were omnipotent and omni-benevolent, he would prevent evil from
occurring. Therefore, accepting the premise that evil does exist,
either God does not exist, or God is either not as good or not as
powerful as is commonly held.
Mackie
points out that the problem of evil is only a problem for people who
believe that God exists, and that God is omnipotent and
omni-benevolent. No such problem exists in the minds of brights
(those with a naturalistic view of the world), polytheists who
believe in gods with conflicting goals, nor monotheists who believe
in a god which has limits to its power, knowledge, or goodness. For
example, consider the following argument regarding a different
supernatural being, the Flying Spaghetti Monster:
If
the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) exists, everyone would be a
pirate.
Everyone
is not a pirate.
The
FSM does not exist.
Few
objections would be raised to the conclusion above because, to
paraphrase Richard Dawkins,
we are all Flying Spaghetti Monster atheists; there is no "problem
of pirates" commonly discussed among philosophers.
So,
in attempting to rebut Mackie's argument, we must presume that God
exists or, at least, that we have strong reason to believe that God
exists.
We
can concede that the premises of the problem of evil conflict without
accepting that the conclusion is valid. If we accept that the God is
great (omnipotent and omni-benevolent), it follows that God would
not, and indeed could not, have created a world with evil.
Furthermore, if the world God created were about to be subjected to
evil, he would be able to and would be compelled to prevent it. That
would mean that the second premise, that evil exists, must be false.
The existence of evil seems self-evident, though. So how can we claim
that evil does not exist?
We
can think of evil as being relative to good. Every act by a human
could conceivably be better (more good) or worse (more evil).
Likewise, any natural act that affects mankind could be better for
mankind or worse. There is no concrete distinction between an evil
act and a good one. There can only be judgments made between the
relative goodness of two acts or events.
When
we say that God is all-good, that means infinitely good. If there is
an infinite scale of goodness in our world and all possible worlds,
there is always the possibility of more goodness, for infinite means
that there are no bounds. So, the problem of evil could be similarly
stated as the problem of imperfection:
If
God exists, the world would be perfectly good.
The
world is not perfectly good.
God
does not exist.
Stated
this way, it seems more logical to accept that God is omni-benevolent
despite the fact that we can find evidence in the world of
imperfection.
If
we consider good and evil not as a duality, but rather a scale of
goodness, it becomes clear that the case for saying that evil exists
is not quite as strong. Instead, it might be better stated that the
best scenario does not always occur. But this is a necessary
condition of a world in which goodness is infinite. For any event
perpetrated or allowed to occur by God could always be upstaged by an
even better one.
It
is also possible that humans, not being omniscient, are unable to
appreciate an apparently evil act in its full context. Because there
are an unlimited number of events occurring in the world, and an
unlimited number of interactions among natural events and living
beings, both sentient and not, it is impossible to judge the totality
of a single event's goodness. Often, different value judgments will
be made upon an act viewed from different perspectives.
Consider
the execution of a convicted murderer. The family of the murderer's
victim might view the execution as the ultimate good act, while the
murderer's family might view it as the most evil. Taking into account
the values of the rest of society or humanity, the execution would be
valued as somewhere in between the two extremes. The value of the act
would be different still in the context of subsequent events that it
influences.
While
it seems all too easy to find evil in the world, upon further
contemplation, such evil can easily be redefined in terms of its
relative position on a scale of goodness. And although an argument
against the problem of evil does not prove the existence of God, it
demonstrates a method of reconciling a belief in God with the
apparent evil that surrounds us.
Sources
Murray,
Michael, "Leibniz on the Problem of Evil", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta
(ed.),
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2005/entries/leibniz-evil/>.
Wikipedia
Contributors, "Problem of evil", Wikipedia: The Free
Encyclopedia, 7 February 2006,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Problem_of_evil&oldid=38547800>.
Wikipedia
Contributors, "Theodicy", Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia,
4 February 2006,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theodicy&oldid=38081634>.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is fictional god-like being invented
in 2005 CE to parody the "Intelligent Design" advocates wishing
to teach creationism in US schools. One of the defining
characteristics of the FSM is its fondness for pirates. See
www.venganza.org for more
information.
Richard Dawkins states in "The Root of All Evil?", a
television special for Channel 4 in the UK, that we are all teapot
atheists with respect to Bertrand Russell's teapot in space.
My argument is admittedly weak. Our second assignment is going to be to
rewrite this essay, so hopefully the class will have improved my arguing skills
before then.
