The Problem of Evil

Well, i'd like to start the mass discussion on something that both Jinny & I aparantly both rock at.

I'll start off with the question and allow it to expand from there:

If God is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing) and benevolent (good) then how can there possibly be evil in the world?

I leave it to you.

Simple. All predicate statements involving God can be answered with one sentence: God doesn't exist.

Very similar to the question heard back in the days of grade school: If God created the universe, who created God? The answer is, that God doesn't exist.

All these paradoxes are enabled by the inability to realize that there is no God.

~Ulrika~

Tommy,
It's called the theodicy problem. It is the fundamental reason why religions exist, to try and answer that one question. In my opinion, none have succeeded even marginally.

Many start with the assertion that it's all our fault. Forbidden fruit and so forth.

Some try and set up a delayed reward/compensation system (think 72 virgins) to even the score. Others go the other way, setting up a delayed punishment system commonly called hell.

Others say it isn't important anyway. Try to become detached from both evil and good. Just be. Then you can eventually extinguish yourself (nirvana) and get off the train.

For me personally, I go with the omlette model, the one you must break eggs to make. If existance has purpose, that purpose greatly exceeds our current ability to comprehend it.

The discussion this evening about faith comes to bear here. the ultimate leap of faith is required to accept that suffering is a necessary precursor or component of the Cosmic Purpose; to accept that suffering is not pointless, that the "human condition" is somehow necessary.

Another metaphore would be to think of human suffering as some sort of birth pangs that are unavoidable to get where we are going, where ever that is.

In order to justify a religious paradox, one must always resort to a call to faith or to concepts which are beyond comprehension. This is how paradoxes in religion are sustained.


Further, the original statement:

is in fact a question form of the following logical statement:

If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent then evil can not exist in the world.

This statement suffers from the logical fallacy known as the "slippery slope argument." The three stated conditions do not logically lead to the conclusion. That is, the existance of a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent does not logically rule out evil in the world.

Thus the question is flawed in that it both presupposes a nonexistant entity and is built upon faulty logic.

~Ulrika~

God consciousness is beyond the limitations of the mind and has nothing to do with the opposites of duality - such as good and evil.

For such a statement to be true, you would have to prove the existance of god and then explain how something beyond the limitations of the mind has nothing to do with the opposites of duality. Otherwise you're just writing poetry.

For instance:

Paul Bunyan's underwear are beyond the limitations of clothiers and have nothing to do with cotton or polyester.



Oh, my. That was funny.

~Ulrika~

That's why I believe in a perfect balance, best summed up as the Taoist yin yang. Opposites are only half, and you must know one to know the other. If you want to know what peace is, you must first know war. If you want to know what quiet is, you must first know noise. If you want to know what light it, you must first know darkness, etc... And they can't function indipendently, either. There is no light without dark, there is no good without evil.

Ulrika,
With all due respect, I do believe you have your fallacies of logic confused here. The slippery slope fallacy or "snowball effect" as it is known today is best typified by the following thought: "If the government takes away my right to religious assembly today, it makes them easier to take away my right to free speech tomorrow. Therefore, in the next year, society will have progressed far enough down the slippery slope that I will have no rights." While similar, the statement above has slight differences. For one, it is not a process, but an immediate and final reaction. Therefore, it cannot fall under the slippery slope fallacy.

My opinion on the stated question:
I believe thet logic that was being used in the statement was that if God knows all, and if God is all-powerful, yet is truly benevolent, how can there be evil in the world? This bears no fallacies of logic, and therefore cannot be cancelled out as such. Having been raised with a Judeo-Christian worldview (which I know is a rarity on these forums and in SecondLife), I know that God only exists by faith, by whatever name you know God by. Some know him as Buddha. Others simply God. Still others by many names in a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses. All of them, though, exist by simple faith.

So if this God that a certain person believes in knows all and is all-powerful, yet benevolent, how can there be evil? Perhaps God allows evil to come in. Swords and other metal objects are put into the fire to become stronger. The evil in the world puts the person through the fires of life, but what doesn't kill you will only make you stronger (to borrow the cliche).

Perhaps I am alone in my viewpoint here, but that's fine. I appreciate the opportunity to express how I feel on this topic in a logical manner.

Oops! I meant non sequitor (check me on that too). I read the wrong line on my cheat sheet. I often refer to it when discussing topics of religion. When doing so, it is virtually impossible for someone to speak on the topic of religion in general without commiting logical fallacies (especially the wishful thinking/faith fallacy). I always use it as an exercise to hone my logic skills.

The statement leads the reader to believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent God would not allow evil to exist in the world, it then asks them to explain why it does.

My answer is that there is no all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent God. Therefore, the question is simply, "why is there evil in the world?" The discussion shouldn't even require the use of the word God. Yet the way it's written makes readers immediate assume its existance.

I also add that even if I accept the existance of a God with those qualities, those qualities are not sufficient to preclude the existance of evil in the world. How does the simultaneous existance of omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolence in a God stop evil from existing in the world?

In order to begin to answer that question one must begin to assume motive, examine morality, discuss free will, and so on. It becomes an exercise in fantasizing about God. Ultimately, all it will yield is litany of speculation based loosely on Judeo-Christian mythology tied tenuously with flawed logic.

~Ulrika~

Matthias,

<Perhaps God allows evil to come in. Swords and other metal objects are put into the fire to become stronger.>

This would mean that evil is a tool used by God. If God is omnipotent, it would seem to follow that God is a deity containing two parts - good and evil - a kind of mixture of the old man with a beard and Satan.

Certainly a God with a Satanic aspect would seem to make more sense than the paradoxical version that most Christians seem to worship.

Some of us believe that "evil" is simply a name applied to the entropic forces that would cause us to reach equilibrium with our surroundings, but I think we're in the minority.

Put another way, life is but a continual struggle against those forces. Mountains don't resist and thus have no reason for a term "evil".

Malachi,

I'm not sure I quite understand your posting; to me you seem to be equating evil with natural entropic processes - ie death, either of the individual or the universe. But perhaps I've simply not grasped the point you are making.

But in any event, I do think that when people discuss issues like these, it is important to establish the framework or viewpoint from which you are observing the issue.

I remember a correspondence in some magazine about animal behaviour; a woman spoke about how she was loved by her dog. A scientist replied, saying the woman was under a misapprehension; what she mistook for love was actually a redirection of the emotional dependence on the pack leader. The dog was simply programmed, and love didn't come into it.

In one respect the scientist was right, except that he was looking at the issue from a different 'framework'. From the scientist's point of view, it could equally be argued that the love a mother feels for her child is equally 'programmed', and was simply an emotional response which ensured the survival of the infant. But clearly, from the human viewpoint both the mother and the dog were experiencing 'love'. Both viewpoints had their own truths, but they needed to be understood as different, separate, viewpoints.

It is when we mix our viewpoints, as the scientist did, that we can come to fallacious conclusions.

Evil is something that only has relevance on the 'lower' levels of view. We are repelled by evil on the purely social, human level. It is something abhorrent to most people. Go up to the level of species survival, and we can see that evil is something which is disruptive to human society, and therefore while it might increase an indvidual's chances of survival under some circumstances, it is certainly not helpful for a species of social animal.

And go up further, and on the cosmic level 'good' and 'evil' are meaningless terms.

I think that your definition of evil in your first paragraph comes from a higher level than we would normally use when talking about a deity.

When it comes to a deity and its impact on our lives, I think we have to take our view from the lower levels, the purely human and social ones.

If you use evil as a tool, then you have evil in you.

I'm sure that many human tyrants have had a good side. I'm sure that Stalin was nice to children. But he had his evil side as well. I find any definition of God that makes the deity look anything like Stalin to be rather disconcerting.

As usual, when we turn our eyes to the deity, we uncover paradox under paradox until we we find a wisp of air - something that has been qualified so much there is ultimately nothing left.

In response to Tommy's original post--

I play the Standard Free Will Defence.

In order for free will to have any meaning, there must be a Choice A and a Choice B. Choice A is the 'right/good' choice, Choice B is the 'wrong/evil' choice. The existence of evil in the world is caused by people using their free will to choose Choice B.

If anyone wishes to dispute the existence or value of free will, I'd suggest that should go into a new thread.

There are those who claim that God could have made us such that we always freely choose the good, but that's a contradiction. 'God can force us to freely will what he wants' is crapulous. In this utopia where eveyone 'freely' wills the good the Good is meaningless and we might as well not exist.

I don't believe in an absolute omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent deity, benevolent or otherwise.

I equally don't believe in an absolute evil (Shai'tan or similar for example).

But that doesn't mean I don't believe in evil actions, I just happen to think my definitions of evil are culturally and to some extent personally imposed.

My culture supports acts of war but not individuals within it killing each other. My personal view is that under some circumstances killing an individual is the correct course of action, and whilst fighting a war against an aggressor might be justified, fighting an offensive war is not.

This puts me at odds with my culture, but what's new there?! But none of those statements require a deity of any form.

- - - - - - - -

If however you demand limiting the debate to why such a deity as you describe allows evil to exist can you describe what evil is in these terms?

A benevolent parent will allow their children to make mistakes, and even suffer a small amount to learn more about life and how it works. Why should a benevolent deity if such a thing exists not allow us the same latitude to make mistakes so we can better learn appropriate ways of acting?

Evil can certainly exist in a world with a deity that is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and benevolent. Where many people's arguments break down is mixing Benevolence with Omnibenevolence.

Benevolent - mostly good
Omnibenevolent - invariably good

Given that we have a universe with evil, defacto any Omniponent deity in this universe is not Omnibenevolent.
Given that we have a universe with evil, defacto any Omnibenevolent deity in this universe is not Omnipotent.

We can argue that evil has a divine purpose, but it would be a logical fallacy to argue that any all-powerful deity is also perfectly good.

Interesting!

By assuming the existance of God you create the condition where man must lose free will in order to be good, finishing with the statement that people might as well not exist.

I approached it from the other direction. Clearly we have free will and the ability to choose between good and evil. Therefore God (as defined above) might as well not exist.

~Ulrika~

But surely the free-will defence falls down badly when we look at the evils of the world which are not caused by Man.

Bearing in mind that I am looking at this from the framework of human experience, disease, accident, bereavement, all the suffering that the universe can heap upon us, these are surely all evils. But their existence is nothing to do with our free will.

Nature is blind, and almost unimaginably 'cruel'. I can see, for example, how natural processes can arrive at a point where a fish gives birth to hundreds of young, only one or two of whom will survive to become fish in their turn. But if a deity were responsible for that, and the other things, then He has a lot to answer for, IMO.

I know you've put cruel in quotes, but why is this cruel or evil? Yes, only a small proportion of the young or potential young of many species reach adulthood and breed and spread their genes on.

But those that die (of whatever type, wherever) have their constituents recycled into other life forms. The (to coin a phrase) 'web of life' continues and each continuing life of whatever type relies on the death (or at least serious injury) of something else. So producing extra young that act as food sources for other species is not how most people would organise things, but is equally only cruel from a limited human perspective.

Most species abandon their offspring, demonstrating from a human perspective an incomprehensible level of parental neglect. Judging the rest of their behaviour by our standards is equally questionable.

Eloise,

<but is equally only cruel from a limited human perspective.>

Clearly my previous postings were indigestible; I apologise for that.

The point I was making in those postings was that when we talk about a deity, we *have* to discuss it from a lower, human perspective, otherwise our discussion takes place in a rarified cosmic atmosphere where good and evil ultimately lose their meaning.

Tell a mother who has lost a child through cot death that nature is not cruel. Tell the person who has lost their entire family through earthquake that 'evil' is something that can only be created by Man.

<and each continuing life of whatever type relies on the death (or at least serious injury) of something else>

That is the problem in a nutshell. And for the person, or animal, in the throes of agony, I'm sure it would be no consolation at all to know that they are part of the natural cycle of death and rebirth.

<So producing extra young that act as food sources for other species is not how most people would organise things,>

No, you are right; it is not. Only the most evil people would organise things in such a way. QED.

Selador, you were exactly correct that my approach was at a level of description different from the main thread, so I will duck out quickly. To us logical positivists, the entropic claim works all the way through the levels of interpretation but I do know this is a minority view.

Finally, Dan Dennett (after Nagel) would probably argue that the qualitative experience of the dog loving its owner is more like our experience of love than unlike it, but we shan't know the answer to that real soon.

/me ducks out of a thread I have no business being in

Hey, fun! All these Thinker meetings happen way too early for me to participate in, so it's nice to have a version running here too.

As to the question, you start off by assuming four conditions: That God...

1. is.
2. is omnipotent.
3. is omniscient.
4. is benevolent.

So, let's play from that basis, hmm? Whatever you think of the truth of any of those.

Ok, so how can there be evil given those conditions? Well, evil to me implies intent. As in, a person blowing up a dam is evil. A thunderstorm causing the dam to overflow and collapse isn't evil. It's just the randomity of the universe. (Would people building their homes in the floodway and thus getting killed be evil, or just stupid?)

I'll go with the free will argument too. A benevolent deity to me would be one that did give me freedom of life, and choice of how to live it. If God did not give me the choice but made me a mindless slave to purity and perfection, I would not consider that benevolent. God is good, therefore he (another assumption) grants us the freedom to choose our own actions. Some people use that freedom to commit horrors on others. There you go - evil.

No the fault is mine, I read the thread in two chunks with several hours between them and hadn't thought back to your earlier posts

From: someone

The point I was making in those postings was that when we talk about a deity, we *have* to discuss it from a lower, human perspective, otherwise our discussion takes place in a rarified cosmic atmosphere where good and evil ultimately lose their meaning.

I'm not Christian or similar, actually although not strictly accurate Daoist is closest, but I think most deists of whatever faith might take issue with this statement...

Surely God is the rarified personification of Good, and Satan that of Evil, within the Christian mythos?

From: someone

Tell a mother who has lost a child through cot death that nature is not cruel.

Nature isn't cruel, it is uncaring, which is a subtle distinction. Cruelty, to me at least, implies intent to harm. Cot death is not caused through intent. That doesn't mean I want to actually confront a mourning mother and tell her that, I want to offer support and comfort. But I wouldn't use the world cruel in any of my supportive comments to her.

From: someone

Tell the person who has lost their entire family through earthquake that 'evil' is something that can only be created by Man.

Again why is the earthquake evil? If I believed in an earth diety that needed to be placated or S/He would shake the ground to kill us I might believe that the deity was evil, but still struggling to find a headset in which I can see an earthquake as directly evil in and of itself I'm afraid.

From: someone

<and each continuing life of whatever type relies on the death (or at least serious injury) of something else>

That is the problem in a nutshell. And for the person, or animal, in the throes of agony, I'm sure it would be no consolation at all to know that they are part of the natural cycle of death and rebirth.

Perhaps I have spent too long as a microbiologist and thus playing with population genetics and the like. On a personal level I would rather, I think, a world without suffering. I'm vegetarian at least in part because of that.

Perhaps not believing in a deity makes it easier for me to say 'This is how it is, and it is not evil'.

Perhaps I look at the wider network and I am prepared to accept individual suffering for the benefit of life overall rather than the individual's perspective, reaching towards that 'rarified level' you allude to.

Or perhaps I'm just indifferent myself. Cruel perhaps in the way it seems to me you use it.

From: someone

<So producing extra young that act as food sources for other species is not how most people would organise things,>

No, you are right; it is not. Only the most evil people would organise things in such a way. QED.

So because you see the world as cruel/evil God cannot exist? Or have I missed the point again?

Malachi,

It's a shame you are ducking out, because I know nothing of the world-view you subscribe to, and would like to know more.

Eloise,

Sorry, my thinking wasn't terribly clear in my last posting. I think what I was trying to say was that if life is the result of random forces operating on each other, then nature cannot be regarded as 'cruel' in the same sense that Man is cruel. As for being evil, perhaps I define the word slightly differently, but I think there is evil caused by people, but also evil which is intrinsic in the natural world. Perhaps I'm defining the word wrongly, but in any event, I am looking at things from the lower, human framework.

If there is any purpose behind all this, in other words, if it has been brought about by a deity, then I feel it's almost unarguable that the deity in question contains evil. The natural world, with its species preying on each other, is a system that, had it been designed by a person, you would say had been designed by a psycopath, at least.

I wasn't arguing that God doesn't exist (although I don't believe in any deity); I was saying that those who believe in God seem to have to go through many psychological back-flips in order to reconcile his omnipotence and omniscience with the problem of evil. I am saying that it cannot be reconciled, and that if you believe in God you have to believe that he is partly evil.

<<I'm not Christian or similar, actually although not strictly accurate Daoist is closest, but I think most deists of whatever faith might take issue with this statement...>>

Well, terms such as 'good' and 'evil' define things which are, on the species level, beneficial or otherwise to the survival of the species. Go up a level, to the planetary scale, and the survival of individual species is something of very minor importance. And go up a few more levels to the great void, sprinkled with galaxies, and the terms have no meaning at all. 'Good' and 'evil' represent two qualities that only have meaning to people, and that is why I feel that when you discuss a deity, you have to do so from the point of view of the lower frameworks.

Ananda,

The thunderstorm you mention is evil if it has been created by a deity. Forget free will. Unless you believe that individual atoms have free will, I would imagine that a religious person would say that the universe has been constructed according to God's blueprint. It makes no difference to an individual whether their leg is blown off by a terrorist bomb or bitten off by a shark; the result is the same.

It's one thing IMV to try to excuse the deity by saying that it gave us free will in order to mess up on our own. Although even that is somewhat suspect, because presumably being omniscient, it would know very well that we would mess up. In order to give us free will it would have to somehow keep that knowledge from itself. Which means that it would have to be self-deluding.

But IMV you cannot excuse the deity for the diseases and natural disasters which afflict the world. That is nothing to do with free will; if you believe in God then it's more to do with the psychology of its creator.

Thank you Selador. Now I feel I have some grasp on your argument.

I might not agree with your position, and I might try to think about why that is and discuss that further if anyone is interested, but at least I have widened my understanding and have a different model to try in my map of how the world works.

To drive it back somewhere close to the original topic, IF - and I did notice you did say you don't believe in a deity - a deity such as first postulated (Omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent (and why not omnipresent, that being more normal) being can exist, is benevolence mutually exclusive to permitting the kinds of cruelty you have identified? We have such expressions as 'being cruel to be kind', 'spare the rod and spoil the child' (however un-PC) etc. that suggest human nature requires pain/punishment as well as reward as a 'training mechanism' for want of another word. If this (still hypothetical) deity wants us to join it/her/him in paradise does allowing us to suffer so we can learn how to approach paradise better remain 'evil' or 'cruel' even within a human-level framework?

Ulrika's solution to the conundrum has the virtue of simplicity, and in my entirely subjective judgement, is probably the correct one. But really, the problem is solveable if any of the premises that Ananda listed is false. You don't have to give up your belief in God to resolve the dilemma; you just have to give up your belief that God is omni-everything. (And the belief that God allows evil in order to serve some higher purpose, including respect for free will, is basically sacrificing omni-benevolence; it says that there is something else more important to God than "goodness".)

Pre-monotheistic religions have an entirely different conception of their gods, not as paragons of infinitude, but merely as powerful beings, with all-too-human failings. I kind of like that.

"A giant once lived in that body, but Matt Brady got lost because he looked for God too high up and too far away."
-- Henry Drummond, in Inherit the Wind