Board index ‹ The Problem of Evil and Suffering

[K Standing]

That's all. What is your rebuttal to the problem of evil?

[jimwalton]

1. Evil and suffering can exist simultaneously with an "omni-" God as long as such evil and suffering have the possibility of good. For instance, a surgeon causes great pain and suffering, but his aim is to heal. Isn’t this surgeon both benevolent and the cause of suffering? The same is true of an oncologist who uses radiation and chemotherapy. These doctors can cause severe pain and suffering to achieve their ends. Yet I would assert that God is not the cause of suffering, but can still allow it to exist as long as there is the possibility of some good or benefit from it, which there is. Those who argue against this would be required to show that evil and suffering NEVER bring benefit, a position that is simply untenable.

2. Evil and suffering can be allowed by an “omni-“ God where free will is necessary for humanity, which it is. Most suffering is caused by man’s inhumanity to man. What is required for God to stop that—the decision not to relieve the suffering? He must take control of our bodies lest we cause harm to another. He must drive for us so no one is injured. He must make sure we never punch, trip, shoot, etc. another. We by necessity need to be robots in God’s hands if there is never to be any inhumanity or accident (pain and suffering).

But then He must also control our minds, for much suffering is caused by words, insults, deprecation, verbal abuse, and even misunderstanding of innocent speech. God has to control our minds, our thoughts and attitudes, our speech, and our responses to decide to relieve suffering.

In other words, God has to steal away all of what makes us human to preserve us from man-to-man suffering. We cannot think on our own, move on our own, decide on our own, love, forgive, be generous, etc. All of these things become meaningless because we’re not doing them—God is making us do it.

3. Evil and suffering can be allowed by an "omni-“ God because a dynamic world is superior to a static one. We will never truly be able to flawlessly predict weather because there will always be variables in the system we can’t see or control (the Butterfly Effect). You can balance a salt shaker on its edge in a restaurant, but it won’t stay there forever. Some force (a truck going by, a breeze, some micro-movement) will eventually cause it to fall. God has created a dynamic world because of its far superiority to a static one. Our Earth is an example. Earthquakes relieve pressure in the tectonic plates—necessary for our survival. Sometimes people get injured in earthquakes, but that doesn’t make earthquakes evil. Without earthquakes we’d pop like a cork and all die. Same with volcanoes and tornadoes. They serve a dynamic function, and can’t be removed without removing life.

Consider the dynamic nature of our bodies. Brain injuries can somewhat repair because neurons are dynamic and can create new routes around areas of infarction. Hearts can grow new blood vessels around areas of injury. This is not only good, but essential. Take it further: our brains work the way they do because our thoughts are dynamic, not static. We can be creative and solve problems because of the dynamic nature of our brains. In other words, without dynamism, there would be no science and no reasoning. We wouldn’t be able to think because all brain activity would be static and determined.

But if dynamism is necessary for life and vitality, we also recognize the dark side of dynamism. People get killed in earthquakes. The reasoning process is sometimes used to plan injury to another. Is God to blame for this? No. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. If free will and dynamism are beneficial and necessary, and yet they have a dark side (I can use my fist to injure just as easily as to hold or to give), a beneficent, knowledgeable, and powerful person can allow the dark side as long as ultimately the good outweighs the bad, the dynamism is of more benefit than harm, suffering can possibly lead to growth and good, and my humanity allows me to truly think, to love, to forgive, and to learn—which is exactly the case.

4. In other words, we come to a point where we can actually see the benefits of evil (not that God perpetrates evil for its benefits; rather, He can use evil to beneficial ends). We can look at the horrible aspects of the Roman Empire (slave pens), but we can also see the benefits that Rome brought to culture and history (Law, travel, trade). While evil is always with us, and horrific it is, without the Roman Empire we would miss out on all the good it brought that outweighed the awful (slavery went away, law did not). Some of the most evil parts of history have actually brought about the most benefit (Nazi Germany motivated an alliance of good nations and resulted in NATO and the United Nations). Surgery brings healing; radiation destroys cancer; dynamism allows science, free will allows love. Love conquers evil. Is is just possible that evil is not the malefaction of an immoral God, or a testament to his un-beneficence, destructive knowledge, or impotent power, but a necessary element in life that makes good rise to what it is? As Frodo said about Gollum: he was evil, and trouble, but he had a part to play in their quest.

Therefore God is not the epitome of evil for “electing to do nothing” in these situations. Instead, God allows evil to happen because a world that allows evil is in many respects far superior than a world that does not, and as long as evil and suffering are ultimately outweighed by good in the universe, an “omni-“ God would choose no other path.

But we are not to think that God delights in evil, perpetrates it, or ignores it. The Bible tells a very different tale—that God treats evil not as a compatriot but instead as an enemy. When something bad happens, God is right in the mix to show a noble way through it, to teach strength and courage by it, to bring people together in the midst of it, and to bring whatever good is possible out of even the most horrific events and experiences.

Not only that, but God shares our suffering as a companion in grief and pain, not aloof and uncaring. To show that evil is not the undoing of us, that suffering will not have the final word, that pain is not meaningless, and that ultimately good will triumph, God enters our pain and experiences it with us. This is not a being who is emotionally needs or psychopathic, but an omnibenevolent, loving, relational God of hope and healing.

As awful as it is, suffering has a unique and necessary place in life. God knows about its existence, but knowledge is not causative. Because God can see all doesn’t mean God causes all. The Bible is quite clear that many things happen that God has not perpetrated. God is omnipotent, but to stop evil would be to steal away our humanity, the Earth’s ability to exist, and even reason and science itself. God is omni-benevolent, but to stop all suffering would actually result in greater harm than greater good.

That's the short version.

[Common Language]

I feel like you skipped over the problem of natural evil far too quickly; and especially those evils which clearly don't lead to any higher good.

You also neglected to mention God's sovereignty over the universe and its design. No one — not least of whom God himself — forced him to create a universe and world in which there's ultraviolet radiation cancer, pediatric leukemia, and catastrophic tsunamis. If we can imagine a world without these, and if God isn't limited by physical laws, then God could have made this happen.

[jimwalton]

I skipped over lots of things! One can't deal with the problem of evil in 10,000 characters or less! I gave a brief overview, that's all.

As far as the issue of natural evil, we all understand that the entire concept and gamut of evil is difficult to capture under a single umbrella. There is the evil that humans use their free will to choose to do, there is evil we perceive in the destructive qualities of natural disasters, and there is also the evil we see in diseases that have nothing to do with the choices of humans. Some people would conclude that any suffering is “evil” because it involves pain endured by people; and therefore even accidents with machinery are “evil.” Some would say any kind of pain or negative experience is “evil.” There is also societal evil, like the Holocaust, political evil (in oppressive regimes), and spiritual evil (Satan and demons and whatever other spiritual forces try to wreak havoc on the planet).

I can at least carve a distinction between moral evil (evil that is the result of people’s choices) and natural evil (e.g., volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc.). Natural “evil” is only generally considered evil, however, if there is collateral damage. In other words, a volcano that doesn’t kill anyone or anything is an event worthy of scientific inquiry, but not evil; but if a person gets killed or injured, it is interpreted as natural evil. This is false thinking because for the latter to be truly evil, there has to be an immoral intent from a personal cause in creating the lava flow with the specific objective of bringing about suffering. A tree falling in the woods isn’t evil, nor is a volcano on a deserted island (or one that creates an island). Therefore, in my opinion, “natural evil” is a misnomer, and if people get caught in natural events as circumstantial victims, we cannot accuse the volcano, or nature at large, of being evil. We can only attribute the title of “evil” to that which has been perpetrated by a personal force against what is understood as “good.” Therefore moral evil and willful evil are the only true kinds of evil.

At its most focused, then, the accusation of “evil” should be reserved solely for the outworking of a conscious and personal will in opposition to an objective moral standard of “good” and “right.” After all, if everything that happens in the world is just natural occurrences, and we are nothing more than the current stage of an evolutionary sequence, the word “evil” is meaningless because matter, chemistry, physical laws, and biological structures assembled by chance cannot be deemed evil or good, but only “existent.” Events either “are,” or “are not,” that’s all. By the same token, natural “evil” can only be construed as evil only if one assumes (or can prove) a moral agent perpetrated the action without the possibility of there being a greater good at stake.

I had mentioned about our natural world being dynamic rather than static, which is not only of benefit, but also probably necessary. Our world seems filled with the “Butterfly Effect,” not only in meteorological and geological phenomena, but even biological electrical impulses, the firing pattern of neurons in our brains, ecosystems, and such things. They behave occasionally in wild ways (the Zika virus, cancerous growths, plagues of disease). They also result in natural “evil,” as previously mentioned.

God should not stop all of these phenomena from happening, just as He should not stop all bad things from happening to good people. Such a dynamic world is essential for life as we know it. God would want to create this kind of world (a dynamic one) if He were creating the best possible world where free will is still at large. For instance, since both our circulatory system and nervous system are beneficial chaotic systems, there is strong biological evidence proving that dynamical systems are beneficial to life. The heart can recover from occasional arrhythmias because it doesn’t always follow the “rules”; the body can create new arteries; our brains can recover from some injuries because neurons can sometimes create new paths. Not only that, but if the brain were static, creativity wouldn’t be possible. Natural processes (trees, snowflakes, clouds, shorelines, faces) couldn’t produce novel outcomes, as they now do.

If God had created a static world (without natural evil), He would have at the same time eliminated all reason, creativity, and scientific inquiry, because our brains wouldn’t be able to think in new paths. And if in His sovereignty He overrode all possibilities of evil, He would also be overriding all possibilities of good. As much as we detest suffering, this would not be a desirable world. Natural science, engineering, and education would be nonexistent; courage and excitement would be absent. Careful structural design would be meaningless (no earthquake or tornado would ever be allowed to hit a building, and God would stop any building from ever collapsing on a person). Medical arts wouldn’t exist, since disease would never harm or kill.

Therefore, even an omnipotent God would not make a dynamical world, given our present human situation, in which natural “evil” cannot occur. It is not only self-contradictory and absurd (He is incapable of both), but also ultimately undesirable, if not impossible, as a form of existence.

> You also neglected to mention God's sovereignty over the universe and its design. No one — not least of whom God himself — forced him to create a universe and world in which there's ultraviolet radiation cancer, pediatric leukemia, and catastrophic tsunamis. If we can imagine a world without these, and if God isn't limited by physical laws, then God could have made this happen.

In the grand scheme of things, the world that we have is a superior state of affairs because it is the only one that allows for the benefits of dynamism, creativity, science, learning, reasoning, and human nature (love, compassion, forgiveness, will, reasoning, logic, science, justice, etc.).

[Vlad]

You gave a pretty good response in regards to the natural evil, and I agree with you in that trees that fall aren't evil, nor are volcanoes. They are just nature doing their thing. So I think it goes back into the original PoE, in that it claims God is evil for allowing an event, without having the same information that an omniscient being has.

[jimwalton]

That traces back, then, to my original response to the OP, where I showed that God is not evil for allow such events, that the presence of evil is somewhat necessary (it allows us to be human and the world systems to be dynamic rather than static), that it has its role to play. I suggest you read my first post to get the gist of what I was saying that addressed that very concern.