Problem of Evil [4]: The Greater Good(s)

[Neithan]

[Cont’d from Problem of Evil [3]: Testing and the Afterlife ]

These final four theodicies, taken from the Daylight Atheism blog, argue that there is some good that God cannot achieve without the existence of evil, and the greater good is enough to outweigh the evil and produce a better world as a result, all things considered. Evil is not an end in itself but a necessary by-product of God’s design.

• A common objection to all of them is that they presuppose a limitation to God’s power, which seems to contradict his omnipotence.

The Free Will Defense
God does not want a world of human robots who act according to programming. Love and faith can only exist with free will, and we can only be truly good if free will is a real choice between good and evil.

1. We are not completely free: we cannot fly or travel faster than the speed of light. So why should we have the ability to harm other people? If the required choice is between worshipping God or rejecting him, we do not need that ability. An all-powerful and all-knowing God could have allowed us to harm only ourselves and did not need to allow us to harm others and cause the suffering of innocents.
2. Free will can only account for moral evil. It cannot explain natural evil for which human beings are not responsible. If natural evil infringes our free will, then this theodicy fails. On the other hand, if God can use natural evil to limit free choices without violating free will, why doesn’t he stop people from choosing evil?

The Teaching Defense
Evil is a means for us to perfect our virtues. By overcoming evil we grow in holiness so that we may ultimately become capable of knowing and experiencing God as he desires for us.

1. If the purpose of suffering is to perfect us, then all people should suffer equally. Yet some live short and horrendous lives of suffering, while others live long in luxury and comfort. Why? The random distribution of suffering seems to refute this defense.
2. Suffering often does not bring people closer to God, in fact it turns some people into atheists when they observe the magnitude of suffering in the world. If evil actively works against God’s intentions, then why hasn’t he eliminated it?
3. God is morally perfect and did not suffer, therefore suffering is unnecessary to perfect us. If God wanted each of us to be morally perfect, why not just create us all that way in the first place?
   [1/2]

 

[Neithan]

[2/2]

The Contrast Defense
For the greater glory of his creation God permits evil so that good things like mercy, justice and love are more clearly shown by comparison with cruelty, injustice and hatred.

• Bringing evil so that good may result is not good at all. Would it be good for a fireman to set a house aflame so that he can demonstrate his heroic firefighting skills? Would a doctor be good if she infected people only to show the effectiveness and relief of the cure? Consider that the flames and the disease kill some of the people and only some are saved. Is that good? An omnipotent God would not need to cause suffering to show his goodness. He could instil that knowledge directly.

Unknown Purpose Defense
We just don’t know. We may never know. God allows suffering for some good reason and the problem of evil is a mystery beyond human understanding.

1. This effectively abandons justification for the claim of God’s goodness. If God permits evil for reasons unknown, what are the grounds for judging him to be good? We need some understanding of his motives, otherwise, we do not know if he is good or evil.
2. It is special pleading to ascribe benevolence to God for benefits or apparent blessings we receive, and then proclaim an unknowable mystery in the face of suffering.
3. It is inconsistent for us to argue that suffering has an unknown purpose, and then work to try and alleviate it. If we truly believed that all suffering is necessary for a greater good, then we would allow it as God does; but any believer who has compassion for others is contradicting this belief by their actions.

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An all-powerful being could actualize any world directly and would not need intermediate means to bring it about, especially if that involved a vast amount of evil and suffering. Does The Greater Good theodicy overlook God’s omnipotence?

 

[Vico]

…

John 9:1–12

1 And Jesus passing by, saw a man, who was blind from his birth:
2 And his disciples asked him: Rabbi, who hath sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?
3 Jesus answered: Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

Deuteronomy 32

35 Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide: the day of destruction is at hand, and the time makes haste to come.
36 The Lord will judge his people, and will have mercy on his servants: he shall see that their hand is weakened, and that they who were shut up have also failed, and they that remained are consumed.

Isaiah 45

6 That they may know who are from the rising of the sun, and they who are from the west, that there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is none else:
7 I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things.

 

[Neithan]

The objection to The Contrast Defense is that it is not good to allow suffering to show some power, such as creating sickness or infirmity only to cure it by healing.

To promise revenge and justice at some future time seems to fall under the Eschatological Defense, with the objection that delaying justice does not explain allowing injustice in the first place.

@Vico I’m not sure exactly what points you’re addressing.

 

[Heavenward]

The one thing you have to consider about the question of good and evil is the concept of time.

God is all good because He exists in the Eternal Now: time has no subjection on Him. He therefore is perfect because He has no potential in Him; all of Him is actualized already. He has omnipresence (distance/zero travel time), omnipotence (energy/zero time to expend energy), omniscience (knowledge/zero time needed to learn), etc.

Once you add the factor of time to anything, then that object gains potentiality: it has the capacity to improve or degrade. And since evil is the absence of good, then since an improved or actualized object is better (has more good) than the object with potential, or conversely an object with potential is better than the same object that has degraded, then it follows that evil is essential to anything that is subject to time.

Heck even in heaven there is evil, if you consider evil as an absence of good. It is Catholic doctrine that the departed souls in heaven enjoy the beatific vision of God in different degrees depending on how they lived their mortal lives, and therefore they experience the goodness of God in different degrees.

So you have to answer: was the creation of time worth it?

 

[OneSheep]

First of all, I gotta hand it to you for your tenacity and energy! Thanks for your efforts.

We are not completely free: we cannot fly or travel faster than the speed of light. So why should we have the ability to harm other people?

To protect ourselves. Also, to protect our loved ones and property, and to have the ability to punish wrongdoing of others.

An all-powerful and all-knowing God could have allowed us to harm only ourselves and did not need to allow us to harm others and cause the suffering of innocents.

People who know the love of God and the value of His creatures do not do these things unless they are temporarily blinded by want or negative emotion.

Free will can only account for moral evil. It cannot explain natural evil for which human beings are not responsible. If natural evil infringes our free will, then this theodicy fails. On the other hand, if God can use natural evil to limit free choices without violating free will, why doesn’t he stop people from choosing evil?

A will is only as “free” as it is aware. When we sin, we come from positions of lack of awareness, very often it is a lack of awareness of the infinite value and dignity of the people we are hurting. It’s more of a “love knowledge”, not a head thing.

The big question is, why did God create a world in which awareness comes so very slowly?

If the purpose of suffering is to perfect us, then all people should suffer equally.

A lot of suffering has nothing to do with “perfecting” us, and it’s not like God decides this or that person is going to suffer. We suffer, and God suffers with us. The fact that suffering helps us learn the way to live does not make it God’s will that individuals suffer some particular circumstance. There has to come a point of humility: we don’t understand the whole of suffering, except that because God is all-loving, it has something to do with creating the Kingdom.

Suffering often does not bring people closer to God, in fact it turns some people into atheists when they observe the magnitude of suffering in the world.

Faith benefits the faithful, and those who they touch with mercy.

If God wanted each of us to be morally perfect, why not just create us all that way in the first place?

Well, He’s doing just that. I go back to the question, “Why does creation have to happen so slowly?”

 

[Neithan]

So you have to answer: was the creation of time worth it?

This looks like an either/or false dilemma. For example, could God have created time without causing the innocent to suffer? If not, that seems to contradict his omnipotence. If yes, that seems to contradict his perfect goodness.

 

[Neithan]

First of all, I gotta hand it to you for your tenacity and energy! Thanks for your efforts.

You’re welcome! Of course the credit has to go to Adam Lee, the author of the blog I took these summaries from (I further paraphrased and summarized). As someone in another thread said, his blog is like “candy” for (aspiring) apologists. He compiles and raises serious issues for the faith, though, argues passionately for freethought and even adds personal stories from atheists about how they broke the bonds of religion, exhorting us to embrace godlessness. Nietzsche would be proud.

To protect ourselves. Also, to protect our loved ones and property, and to have the ability to punish wrongdoing of others.

People who know the love of God and the value of His creatures do not do these things unless they are temporarily blinded by want or negative emotion.

It’s circular though, isn’t it? We wouldn’t need to protect people and property from other people, or punish them for wrongdoing, if there was no ability to harm each other.

The big question is, why did God create a world in which awareness comes so very slowly?

Good question!

There has to come a point of humility: we don’t understand the whole of suffering, except that because God is all-loving, it has something to do with creating the Kingdom.

Doesn’t that just defer to the “Unknown Purpose” defense?

Faith benefits the faithful, and those who they touch with mercy.

Why doesn’t God give everyone faith? St. Thomas thought that God reprobates some people, which seems difficult to reconcile with perfect mercy.

I go back to the question, “Why does creation have to happen so slowly?”

I suppose it shows God’s greater glory, something like the Contrast Defense; but that seems cruel to allow so much suffering “in the meantime” only to demonstrate eventually how great and wonderful he is — many an atheist refuses to worship such a God and would fail to reach perfection if damned.

 

[Pattylt]

While the problem of evil is not why I originally left faith in God behind…it was His absence…it definitely keeps me away.

The evil humans do can be blamed on original sin, and often is, but it does nothing to explain the horrid suffering of the animal kingdom. Animals supposedly don’t have immortal souls and I’ve never heard an explanation for why an all good God would allow His creatures to suffer as they do…most of which is never observed by us, so you can’t even bring in vicarious suffering as an explanation.

Please don’t try the animals don’t feel pain as we do, either. They most certainly do. The larger animals have neural networks and pain receptors, heck they even scream as we do. I just find it inexplicable. There is no reason a good God would have nature be as savage as it is and give them an ability to feel pain and terror. If someone has an explanation for this, I’m all ears. At least calling it a mystery is honest though unsatisfactory.

 

[Heavenward]

This looks like an either/or false dilemma. For example, could God have created time without causing the innocent to suffer?

That is like asking whether God can make a triangle out of two straight lines. If you are referring the innocent as “children” then remember that we can only have children because of time, and because of time children grow. Now children, indeed all living things, need to have a way to know the wrong path to growth, and that is pain.

Indeed God makes a place in the future where there will be no pain, and that is the Second Earth, the Earthly Paradise. But then those who will populate that will never grow, they have actualized their potential, and thus they are perfect, and don’t need pain anymore.

Time necessitates suffering. So I ask you again: is time worth it?

 

[OneSheep]

OneSheep:

To protect ourselves. Also, to protect our loved ones and property, and to have the ability to punish wrongdoing of others.

People who know the love of God and the value of His creatures do not do these things unless they are temporarily blinded by want or negative emotion.

It’s circular though, isn’t it? We wouldn’t need to protect people and property from other people, or punish them for wrongdoing, if there was no ability to harm each other.

Well, we punish all sorts of things. For example, we punish disobedience; and the “harm” might be very difficult to grasp. But in any case, the capacity to punish serves our social-cooperation needs as well as other group harmony issues. We punish “selfishness”, and so do other apes.

Why doesn’t God give everyone faith? St. Thomas thought that God reprobates some people, which seems difficult to reconcile with perfect mercy.

It makes more sense to me that faith is a gift given to everyone, but our own receptiveness varies.

I suppose it shows God’s greater glory, something like the Contrast Defense; but that seems cruel to allow so much suffering “in the meantime” only to demonstrate eventually how great and wonderful he is — many an atheist refuses to worship such a God and would fail to reach perfection if damned.

Well, we can know the absence of cruelty through relationship. It’s not something we are going to arrive at through reason. Pope Francis said, (paraphrased) “You don’t learn the truth from an encyclopedia, you know the truth when you meet it.”

Doesn’t that just defer to the “Unknown Purpose” defense?

Ha! I wouldn’t use it as a “defense”. Heck, I don’t feel compelled to defend anything. What someone wants to think, I let them think it. Does anyone feel drawn to relationship through philosophical defense anyway, through apologetics? I guess its possible to erase a few philosophical roadblocks, but I don’t have all the answers. People of faith have a lot of answers to questions that others leave unanswered (i.e. what is the purpose?), so who wins?

Better to talk about how to build the Kingdom; I think the atheists are on board with that one, once defined liberally enough.

— many an atheist refuses to worship such a God and would fail to reach perfection if damned.

Atheists can be invited to be the God they think God should be, and then they may come to understand by reaching within their hearts. They might not find what they think is “God”, but there is bound to be something revealed.

 

[Magnanimity]

the horrid suffering of the animal kingdom.

First, I want to agree alongside you that brutality/violence/suffering among all animals (to include humans) are repulsive on some level. The more brutal and violent an event is, the more we are repulsed by it. But the only way that this would be possible–these existential/phenomenological reactions we all have to brutality–is if there were something intrinsic to the living being itself, which we recognized was being violated in the violence and brutality. That is, it is reasonable to conclude from our universal reactions to such phenomena that living beings are in some sense sacred. That is, they possess inalienably an intrinsic worth/sanctity/dignity.

Animals supposedly don’t have immortal souls

Although this is the Thomistic belief, it is hardly a necessary belief. Many Fathers and Mothers of the church have taught a universal restoration of all things in the end, to include the whole order of creation (like animals). For Aristotle, the “soul” was simply that which animates a living being–the living creature’s self-motion, as it were. Just as one might believe in an afterlife that redeems a human’s suffering, so too one could believe in an afterlife that redeems an animal’s suffering. How do you account for your belief in the sanctity/dignity of animal life?

There is no reason a good God would have nature be as savage as it is and give them an ability to feel pain and terror.

And what if I were to suggest that the brutality/disease/war/killing/violence are rare interruptions to the norms of peace and animals just going about their daily business. Could you counter this claim? “Nature, red in tooth and claw” is a mid-19th century perspective. It’s a British point of view (Tennyson), and one that was a natural outworking of the bleak conditions of British life for many in that time period.

The rare punctuations of brutality/disease/war/killing/violence set against the ongoing peaceableness of the planet is not enough of an argument to undermine the theist’s conception of God. Rather, it just fits right in with her extant belief in a “fallen” (less-than-the-best) world. That is, just as there are not always rivers of blood flowing down city streets, so too there are not rivers of blood flowing through the African safari. The norms of Nature are peace and stability, rarely interrupted by tsunamis, disease, brutality, war and violence. It is hard to argue otherwise. Think of your own daily life. How often do you perceive “horrid” savagery as you go about your day, either in nature or just among humans? You might say, “well, horrid savagery is occurring somewhere, even if I’m not perceiving it.” And that would be quite right. But, I’m addressing the frequency of it as opposed to the frequency of peace and stability. The percentage of most animals’ lives (to include humans) spent in horrid savagery is minuscule compared to the percentage of time spent in peace and stability. This is not ‘Pollyanna.’ It’s observation.

 

[Freddy]

Pattylt:

the horrid suffering of the animal kingdom.

First, I want to agree alongside you that brutality/violence/suffering among all animals (to include humans) are repulsive on some level.

And that is simple empathy.

I have no problem swatting a mosquito (I just did actually), but I might be a little squeamish treading on a mouse. And would actively try to prevent someone killing a dog and would resort to violence to prevent someone doing the same to an ape. We only value animals in respect to the degree with which we can empathise with them. It’s why we value other humans (the reasons are different for family). We know what it’s like to be them.

And didn’t someone mention Pet Heaven earlieras a solution to the problem? Is that goi g to be one of the serious answers we need to include in the list?

And your suggestion that life is mostly wine and roses in the animal kingdom is rejected outright. Any given carnivore needs to kill something every time it wants to eat. The vast majority of animals spend their lives doing nothing more that trying to stay alive.

They say that you are never more than a few metres from a rat. Wherever you live. However clean your house. City or country. And because of the virus there are less restaurants and cafes open, more people at home all the time and rats apparently are under stress and have less access to food. So they will start killing and eating their young at a greater frequency. You don’t get to see this but it happens where you live. It’s not observation. It’s what you don’t see.

Ain’t nature wonderfull…

 

[Neithan]

…it was His absence…

That’s certainly part of the PoE, if we look deeper into it. A felt or perceived absence of God, the supreme and perfect good. Nothing would exist if he was truly absent, so this is something subjective.

 

[Neithan]

Ain’t nature wonderfull…

Yes it is. Natural selection is an abstraction of an observation though; it describes the development of life but ultimately we’re appealing either to God for an explanation or claiming there is no explanation (brute facts). Theists have the Problem of Evil, but atheists have a Problem of Existence, that we can’t even rationally discuss because it’s arbitrary and autoepistemic.

God could have actualized a world with no fear or pain at all. That is not the world we’re in. Is there something good about a world that evolves naturally, rather than immediately actualized?

 

[Neithan]

But then those who will populate that will never grow, they have actualized their potential, and thus they are perfect, and don’t need pain anymore.

My understanding is that we will never stop growing in holiness; that we cannot ever be fully actualized or perfect; only God is.

Time necessitates suffering. So I ask you again: is time worth it?

There is time in paradise; but no suffering, right? I still see a false dilemma.

 

[Neithan]

Atheists can be invited to be the God they think God should be, and then they may come to understand by reaching within their hearts

I’m afraid that is exactly what they are going to try to do; that is what lies at the heart of atheism, and motivates its arbitrary adherence to a narrowly delimited epistemology. As Feuerbach said, the No to God is the Yes to Man.

At the end of the essay critiquing all these “defenses” to the PoE, Lee tries to argue how atheists must respond to evil. It’s an exercise in cognitive dissonance.

 

[Freddy]

At the end of the essay critiquing all these “defenses” to the PoE, Lee tries to argue how atheists must respond to evil. It’s an exercise in cognitive dissonance.

I’m not sure what you (or Lee) mean by this. There’s good in the world and sometimes bad. We deal with each as it arrives and ‘fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run…’

 

[Neithan]

Attacking the Christian idea of God as a moral failure, consequently that good does not exist as any ultimate reference for morality, and then conclude that atheists can best respond to evil. Huh? Not only is it ethically groundless special pleading, but it’s hypocritical and incoherent.

To be fair Lee’s not the only atheist who does this. I suspect for rhetorical reasons because amorality is not palatable to most people (including themselves, hopefully). That’s a distinctive motivation for the “New Atheism”: an attempt to ground things like ethics and agency in naturalism. It’s an interesting, and maybe necessary, intellectual exploration, if only to demonstrate reasons to abandon atheism.

 

[Freddy]

Attacking the Christian idea of God as a moral failure, consequently that good does not exist as any ultimate reference for morality, and then conclude that atheists can best respond to evil. Huh? Not only is it ethically groundless special pleading, but it’s hypocritical and incoherent.

Uh? Who said good wasn’t used as a basis for morality? Very simply put, a moral act is an act that results in good and an immoral act is one that results in something bad. A vast oversimplification, but you can’t exclude what one considers to be good from any concept of morality.

I just don’t need someone’s concept of what God considers good to guide my decisions. You do. And there’s no problem with that as 95% of matters regarding morality we’d would surely agree on. But, again vastly oversimplified, your prime reason for not doing something is because God has declared it to be wrong. Whereas I have specific reasons as my prime reason.

And as to the evils that befall us, they’re either natural or man made. You need to either include or exclude God from them. Hence the problem of evil. And I’m not counting but I think we’ve had at least five different answers to it so far.