The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Maybe the best article on the Problem of Evil?

Studies Articles
#1

I’m not saying solution - though I think it comes closest to what is probably the truth.
I’d written Bill Vallicella (the Maverick Philosopher) about the POE and our discussions here, and either based on my questions or pure serendepity, he posted, today, the following succinct article, that is well worth reading imo. Give it a full read and let it simmer awhile, see what you think. :smiley:

Generic and Specific Problems of Evil: The Nature and Tractability of the Problem Depends on the Type of Theism Espoused

A reader requests some help in a debate he is having with some atheists re: the problem of evil. My advice: don’t debate atheists. Read their arguments and consider them carefully. Then think the problem through for yourself in as intellectually honest and existentially serious a manner as you can. Then decide whether to accept and practice a religion. Debate with atheists is like debate with leftists: it is unlikely to be fruitful.

But the following way of looking at the matter of God and evil may be of some help to my reader. In this entry I distinguish generic theism from specific theisms and then I claim that (i) the logical complexion and tractability of the problem of evil depends on the type of theism adopted, and that (ii) for something close to an orthodox – minsicule ‘o’-- Christian theism the problem of evil is more tractable than for generic theism.

Suppose we define a ‘generic theist’ as one who affirms the existence of a bodiless person, a pure spirit, who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, and who in addition is perfectly free, the creator and sustainer of the universe, and the ground of moral obligation. This generic theism is common to the mainstream of the three Abrahamic religions. Most theists, however, are not ‘generic’ but adopt a specific form of theism. Christians, for example, add to the divine attributes listed above the attribute of being triune and others besides. Christianity also includes doctrines about the human being and his ultimate destiny in an afterlife. The (philosophical) anthropology and eudaimonology of Christianity is just as important to it as its theology. Generic theism is thus an abstraction from the concrete specific theisms that people accept and live. And let’s be clear that while doctrine is essential to religion, pace Wittgenstein, or perhaps pace only certain epigoni of Wittgenstein, no religion is exhausted by its doctrine. Each concrete religion is a way of life and a form of life. Each concrete religion seeks an orthodoxy and an orthopraxy.
Now the point I want to make is that, just as we ought to distinguish between generic theism and specific theisms, we ought to distinguish between the generic problem of evil and specific problems of evil. The generic problem of evil is the problem faced by the generic theist of reconciling belief in a God possessing the standard omni-attributes with the existence of evil in the kinds and amounts encountered in the actual world. A specific problem of evil, on the other hand, is the problem a specific type of theist has in reconciling the existence of God with the existence of evil.

We need to examine whether the problem a theist of a specific stripe has in reconciling God and evil is easier to solve or perhaps harder to solve than the problem a generic theist has.

To see what I am driving at, imagine a version of theism — call it version A — that affirms God, immortal souls, and the eventual blissful communion of all souls with God. On this version of theism there is purgatory, but no hell defined as a state of everlasting separation from communion with God. Thus on this version of theism there is post-mortem evil, the pain of purgatory, but this purgatorial evil is instrumental for the achieving of a higher good and is to that extent redeemed by this higher good.

Now compare this theism-A with a theism-B which affirms God but denies post-mortem existence whether in the form of immortal souls or in the form of resurrected (ensouled) bodies. On this alternative the God of the generic theist (defined above) exists, but for human beings this life is all there is: at death a human being ceases to exist utterly. Now does it not seem that the theist-B faces a much tougher problem than the theist-A when it comes to reconciling a good God with the fact of evil? So it seems to me.

For the theist-B, the horrendous evils of this life are not compensated for by any life to come. One suffers pointlessly, meaninglessly. But for the theist-A, the transient evils of this short life are as nothing compared to the endless bliss of the soul’s communion with God and with other purified souls. Thus gratuitous evil for the theist-A is a vanishing quantity. To appreciate this, you must understand that for the theist-A, God is Being itself in its full plenitude while this world, though real, is entirely derivitive and entirely dependent, at each instant, on the divine Reality of t its existence, nature, and intelligibility. The supreme Reality is like the sun outside of Plato’s Cave; this world is the cave, its furnishings, and its benighted troglodytes.

[By the way, right here is a chief reason for the pointlessness of discussions with atheists. The typical atheist is a naturalist/materialist/physicalist for whom this physical world is the ens reallissimum. One cannot have a fruitful discussion with someone whose sense of reality and value is entirely different from one’s own. Analogy with the political: if you have a traditional notion of justice you won’t get far with someone who thinks of justice as ‘social justice.’ But I digress.]

Most atheists share the very strong intuition that the probability of this world’s containing the amount of evil it does is much greater on the hypothesis that God does not exist than it is on the hypothesis that God exists:

Prob(E/~G) >> Prob(E/G).

They take this as evidence that there is no God. For if there were a God possessing the standard omni-attributes, why would there be the amounts of evil that we actually encounter? But to properly evaluate this inequality, how can one leave out the rest of what most theists believe? The amount and kinds of evil in this world enter the calculation, no doubt. But the absence of gratuitous evil, and the presence of unending bliss in the next world, are also relevant if the question concerns reconciling God and evil within theism-A.

Here is an analogy. Some of us had rotten childhoods but are enjoying very good adulthoods. Suppose Sam is such a person, now age 60. Up to age 23 Sam’s life was on balance not worth living; after age 23 it became worth living. Suppose Sam claims that his life is overall rotten due to his lousy first 23 years. You would point out to him that his judgment is ridiculous and unjust. The quality of one’s life overall depends on the whole of it, not just on part of it. There is also the consideration that there is a surplus of value due to the life’s going from bad to good, rather than in the other direction (bonum progressionis.) Similarly, a just evaluation of the value of life in this world cannot be based solely on what goes on in this world, but must also take into consideration what goes on in the next.

To sum up:

  1. Real live theists are not generic theists, but theists of some particular stripe or other. Generic theism is an abstraction. Real live theists hold specific doctrines that are embodied in specific practices. Among these doctrines will be a theory of the nature of man, his ultimate destiny, his final felicity, and his relation to God. Although the question of the existence of God is logically distinct from the question of the nature of man, in a specific theism such a Christianity, the theology and the anthropology are mutually influencing so much so that if there is no God, then there is no Man either. (If what distinguishes man from other animals is imago dei, then no God, no Man.)

  2. The problem of evil, if it is to be a genuine existential conundrum bearing on how one lives one’s life and not a mere logic puzzle, is the problem of reconciling the existence of the God of a particular religion with the fact of evil as evil is understood from within this particular religion.

  3. A theism that affirms God, post-mortem existence, and the eventual unending blissful communion of all souls (or resurrected persons) with God does not face the same problem of evil as a version of theism which denies post-mortem existence. The problem of evil for the former type of theist is much less serious than it is for the theist of the latter type.

  4. It is dialectically unfair for atheists to argue against all (classical) theists from the fact of the evil in this world when (i) not all theists are generic theists, and (ii) some theists believe that the transient evils of this short life are far outweighed by the unending bliss of the world to come.

  5. It is arguable that there is no insoluble problem of evil for theists-A. Suppose this world is a “vale of soul-making” (the phrase is from John Keats) in which human beings, exercising free will, make themselves worthy, or fail to make themselves worthy, of communion with God. Combine this soul-making idea with post-mortem existence, and the existence of purgatory but not hell, and we have perhaps the elements of a solution to the problem of evil. (Cf. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, Part IV)

Let me conclude by noting that a theism-C which holds to eternal damnation for some may exacerbate the problem of evil. Here I refer you to David Lewis’ posthumous “Divine Evil” in Louise Antony, ed., Philosophers Without Gods, Oxford 2007, pp. 231-242. Lewis, may God rest his soul, maintains that the usual logical and evidential arguments from evil are a “sideshow” compared to a “simpler argument, one that has been strangely neglected” (p. 231) that focuses not on the evils that God fails to prevent, but on the one’s he perpetrates. And then he goes on to speak of hell and eternal torment. You can guess what conclusion he comes to.

We shall have to examine Lewis’ simpler argument from evil in a separate post. But I am happy that he in effect concedes one of my points, namely, that a serious discussion of the problem of evil must address the whole of a theistic position and not focus merely on God and his attributes.
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#2

Just so you don’t think your comment is not read - I have not been quite in the mood to analyze the post, so I don’t have much to say, other than thanks for posting it, so I can look at it later. :slight_smile:

#3

Not to worry Gabe - it’s not mandatory reading :smiley: .I will of course be glad to hear what you think of it!

I think it does what an article can do, but it’s not a ‘paper’ or a book. I’ve read VanInwagen’s book on evil, as well as books by John Hick and Alvin Plantinga and others on the problem, and my head started to do a slow explosion. Could not see the forest for the trees. So I communicated with Bill V. and he helped me see the forest - and that is all the article is, really, a way out of the confusion, the larger perspective, but does not purport to answer all questions.
You and others may or may not be happy with it, and that’s fine, it’s just one contribution. For me - I think it goes as far toward an answer to the POE as I will ever get, and I’m adopting it. :smiley:

#4

Here’s the main reason I like this way of framing the question of the POE.
You are probably aware of the following logical fallacy:

*Description of Straw Man Fallacy:

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of “reasoning” has the following pattern:

Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.*
source: nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html

I think the POE is often framed such that it commits a “Straw God” fallacy:
-“God” is Omnipotent and Omnibenevolent.

  • If he is omnipotent, he has the power to prevent all evil and suffering; if he is all-loving, he wants to end all evil and suffering;
  • But there is much suffering and evil;
  • Therefore “God” is either not Omnipotent, or not Omnibenevolent, or both.

There are other ways of stating the problem, that’s just my way of putting it.
I think this argument goes astray by not acknowledging that God is a Story, if I can be excused for putting it that way. We don’t have a ‘bare-bones’ concept of a Deity; the concept has been fleshed-out (!) in Jesus Christ.
And in fact that is one part of the Story. The Story is (generally):
Creation - Fall - Israel - Christ - Church - Ages to come.

Ignore any of those key “moments” in the Story, and the Story falls. The last chapter - the Age to Come - has not been given enough weight, imo, when we argue the POE. That’s something we just need to actually put some time into thinking about. As EU’s, we can actually think about it, with great hope and love in our hearts, as opposed to those who believe that in addition to the evil in the world, brought about by mankind, God himself will add the pain of eternal conscious torment.

The answer to other questions (Why did God allow the rape of a little girl?), if they exist, are in that Story somewhere imo, and giving the proper ‘weight’ to each moment in the Story is important in locating the answers.

$.02

#5

This is the classic philosophical argument against the existence of an omnipotent,omnibenevolent God. I don’t think it’s a “Straw God” fallacy.
However, the argument doesn’t take into consideration the probability that God doesn’t wish to interfere with the free will (ability to choose) with which he gifted man. God wants humanity to submit to his authority and thereby live the best life possible.

  1. God is omniponent. He can prevent all evil in the world.
  2. God is omnibenevolent. He wants the very best for mankind.
  3. If he forces people not to do evil acts to each other such as murder, rape, torture, etc. then He will be interfering with free will, and would have but a race of “robots”.
  4. He knows that the best possible scenario for the maximum benefit of all is that all will come under his authority, of their own free will. And that will eventually happen so that the whole universe will be one gigantic bundle of joy.
#6

I know, I know, I knew when I did it, that using ‘Straw God’ was not strictly accurate for that type of fallacy. But I did it anyway, to make a point. :smiley:
I know that logically, the ‘classic’ problem, in the syllogism, is in fact valid as to form; but imo the premise is such that many people assume they know what “God” means, and their conception may be false.

So I’m gonna stick with it because illustrates that the word ‘God’ (I put it in quotes in the original) is not univocal; it is ambiguous. In fact the premise itself cannot be judged as true or false, because of the ambiguity.

Logical niceties aside,) I just wanted to point at the ambiguity at the center of the ‘classical’ syllogism - not a problem of logical validity, but the indefiniteness of the premise.

Thanks for the comments, Paidion! This thread has had a number of hits, and no responses, I was beginning to despair. :smiley:

For the curious:
There are two main types of ambiguity:

Lexical: A word or short phrase that is ambiguous. As noted above, "note" is lexically ambiguous. When an argument commits a fallacy based on lexical ambiguity, it is called "equivocation"―see the subfallacy, below. 

Equivocation is the type of ambiguity which occurs when a single word or phrase is ambiguous, and this ambiguity is not grammatical but lexical. So, when a phrase equivocates, it is not due to grammar, but to the phrase as a whole having two distinct meanings.

Of course, most words are ambiguous, but context usually makes a univocal meaning clear. Also, equivocation alone is not fallacious, though it is a linguistic boobytrap which can trip people into committing a fallacy. The Fallacy of Equivocation occurs when an equivocal word or phrase makes an unsound argument appear sound.

#7

I was just thinking about the problem of evil vs eternal damnation. The best I have come up with over evil is that we are only looking at evil from our own limited understanding. We only are looking at evil from an egoic point of view, which assumes that a good God should not allow evil. But if we understand evil in its true essence, it is the absence of existence. So it just means there is something missing. However, usually what we call evil is nothing more than some type of absence. Like Sin is nothing more than missing the mark, of total perfection of union with Jesus. Or other evils, like death is only cessation of life, lust is only sexual pleasure without love, illness is only a body without proper functions. It just seems like something to the ego, and therefore needs to always condemn rather than add.

However with Eternal Damnation, we are claiming the authority to give an ultimate definition of something beyond what we can grasp, in assuming that there are two classes of saved and damned. Either way, we are just making egoic labels.

#8

I sometimes think that the bigger problem is how do we deal with evil. Are we to just accept evil or fight against it? I find that it is easy to hold to the serenity prayer standard, where the way we should determine whether we should change something is the only just time to fight evil.

Then there are also questions on whether it is wise to have hope, or to just not expect anything.

#9

To avoid suffering, the Buddha would be our best bet. All we have to do is see the illusion of all our attachments and let them go. Unfortunately, I found through experimentation that that was for me a dark path. In so many way, our attachments are who we are. Are we attached to the idea of love of neighbor? to feelings for loved ones, for justice, for great beauty, for good food, autumn - it would make a long list, the point being that to the degree we are attached to those ideas and feelings and sentiments, that’s the degree we will suffer when we are deprived of them. So - don’t get attached, not even to ideas of right and wrong, not even to the illusion that you are a self - give it all up and there will be no need for suffering.
For me, that’s a type of spurious self-denial and cuts us off from the roots of our common humanity.

Now certainly that is, if not a caricature, at least a gross simplification; I admit that it may be, but It’s what I genuinely experienced.

There is a time for suffering. Hopefully, we have a Vision that keeps us from perishing during that suffering, and also enables us to help those in distress as well.

#10

The best response I’ve seen started on evil and the Christian response to it (at least, they have a good start), came from the Journal of Christian Theology and Philosophy. It’s called Eternal Selves and The Problem of Evil.

#11

That was a good article, especially in laying out the problems concisely. And the tack he takes as to a possible solution is interesting as you said, a start.
The loss of transcendence is well presented and the results teased out in a very good book:

Eclipse of Heaven: The Loss of Transcendence and Its Effect on Modern Life Paperback – July 15, 1999
by A. J. Conyers (Author)

#12

Well, Dave, this video sums up my response to the article:

#13

Speaking only for myself:

I think the “problem of evil” is risible. I had never even heard of such a thing until I was in college. I thought then and I think now that it sounds like something from an undergraduate beer game: “Can God make a stone big enough that He can’t lift it?”

The Bible (to say nothing of the lives of the saints) is chock-a-block full of accounts of great suffering, yet the Bible never acts as though suffering makes God’s existence somehow questionable. Was it because the biblical writers were barbaric and moronic simpletons who couldn’t see this “obvious” difficulty? Or is it because we moderns are so soft and contemptible that we, like petulant children, think that God’s job is to make me comfortable and happy, and because I’m not comfortable and happy, I’m going to be an atheist who is perpetually bitter and angry at God? (Blessed consistency!)

I think the only honest answer to the problem of evil is: “Grow up.” In my own life I’ve never encountered a serious person who put it forward. It has always been smarmy college students (male, always male) whose biggest concern in life is sleeping with pretty girls. Just as they act like they are the first people in history to discover sex, so they think they are the first ones to discover suffering (even though they suffer less than 99+% of the rest of humanity). I notice a correlation: The less one suffers, the more likely he is to posit the problem of evil as justification for unbelief.

#14

Geoffrey - I think a lot of us get into the problem because we’re trying to defend the faith, and as the attacks become more sophisticated and pointed we are forced to up our game and sharpen our defense.

#15

I think your post is wonderful Dave. Thank you.

#16

Don’t get me wrong: I’m OK with people showing how inconclusive the problem of evil is. My peeve is with the male college student atheists who think their simple syllogism disproves Christianity. I think C. S. Lewis was absolutely correct when he called the various versions of atheism “boys’ philosophies”.

#17

Geoffrey - I’m with you on that. I was an obnoxious sophomore (is there anything worse?) :blush: who took a bit of pride in messing with other people’s heads. I knew big words! :laughing: And big big questions! I was deep, because I studied deep stuff!!

Well, I got over it, but I understand exactly what you’re saying. :smiley:

John - you’re welcome.

#18

When I attempted to click on the website indicated, Malwarebytes immediately blocked it, indicating that it is a malicious site.

#19

I use mb as well and did not receive any warnings. Go figure.

#20

Well, I put the same expanded URL into Virus Total at virustotal.com, which has many paid and free anti-virus and anti-malware software that scans URL, files, etc. It came out clean.
Then I put the URL shortener is.gd into virustotal.com. Malwarebytes is also in their tool list. They came up with “suspicious site”, while the other software ant-viral and anti-malware came up clean.

I notice specifically that Avira, Bit Defender and Kaspersky are in their arsenal - all highly rated - giving a clean bill of health. If you go to their about page at virustotal.com/en/about/, it says this:

Could Malwarebytes be coming up with a false positive? You or anyone else here, is welcome to conduct the same tests for themselves.

Here’s one definition of false positive at pcguide.com/care/data/virus/scanFalse-c.html

Now don’t get me wrong here. Malwarebytes is an excellent software tool. In fact, I run their free versions monthly on all my computers. But I use 360 Total Security on my own Windows computers and CM Security for my Android tablets. 360 Total Security has the Avira and Bit Defender anti-viral engines, as well as their own. I also have the Avast Online Security, McAfee Site Advisor and Web of Trust plug-ins installed in the latest version of Google Chrome. None of these are flagging the websites I have given, and they are all top notch anti-viral engines, as rated by independent testing laboratories.

In fact, just to test this, I searched for is.gd In Google, as well as the keywords "Eternal Selves and The Problem of Evil ". Mcafee, Avast and Web of Trust all gave it the green light. And 360 Total Security (with the Avira and Bit Defender engines), did not stop me from clicking it (actually, McAfee, Avast and WOT would also stop me, if they flagged the site as bad).

And the is.gd site gives these stats: