Part 4: If God Exists Then Innocent Babies Must Die! (and God doesn’t care)
In order to discuss the problem of evil, certain stipulations must be agreed upon. First of all, this argument focuses on the idea of an omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), omni-benevolent (all good) God who is able to influence the world (for example through miracles). If your definition of God differs from this, then there is most likely no issue with the problem of evil. It is important to note that if any of these characteristics are removed, then this “ultimate being” is no longer considered "God".
The problem of evil argues that this notion of God is incompatible with the existence of evil in the world. Since we generally agree that there is evil in the world, it follows that God (as described above) cannot also exist (if anyone would like to argue there is no evil in the world, I’d love to hear it!). With these stipulations settled, we can move on.
The original problem of evil came from Epicurus and can be basically summed up in the following:
- God is omnipotent.
- God is omni-benevolent.
- Evil exists in the world.
Only two out of the three statements above can be compatible with each other at any one time.
For example, if evil exists in the world and God is omnipotent (i.e. he has the power to rid the world of evil), then God must not be omni-benevolent since he is allowing this evil to exist. Another example is if evil exists in the world and God is omni-benevolent (i.e. he is infinitely good), then God must not be omnipotent as he must be unable to rid the world of evil. In both cases, the theist would have to disagree as God must be both infinitely powerful and infinitely good. So then why do innocent, baby kittens ever die?
To combat this argument, the theist would suggest that the only reason evil exists in the world is due to us humans. Through our freedom of will, we create evil as we have the choice to either do good or do evil. Moreover, this is necessarily so as without this freedom of choice there would be no such thing as moral good since there would be no proper choice between good and evil. Basically, God is testing us and giving us the options and most of us just keep choosing evil, and therefore we bring the evil into this world, not God.
The major flaw in this reasoning is that God is also omniscient. That is, God knows all, past and future. Therefore, before God even created humans, he knew he’d supply them with free will. He also knew that he would give humans the choice between good and evil. Therefore, he knew that many (if not most) people would choose to be evil. As a result, he consciously unleashed evil into this world as he gave us the ability to choose, he supplied us with the only possible choices, and he knew ahead of time that most of us would choose evil over good, yet he still followed through with his plan. Hence, God is in fact responsible for bringing evil into the world (which negates his omni-benevolence and therefore negates his existence).
Now even if theists are able to argue around this point, there are still further issues with respect to the problem of evil as the above only relates to human choice. However, there are other evils in the world that occur that are arguably not a result of human choice. The common example that is referenced is the Lisbon earthquake in which the entire town of Lisbon was suddenly and utterly destroyed. Up to 100,000 people were killed. Now why would God allow this evil to occur outside of any human’s freedom of choice? How is a natural disaster that kills thousands and thousands of people a necessary evil?
The common philosophical example comes from William Rowe and is referred to as “Rowe’s Fawn”. Pretend there is a cute, innocent, little fawn walking through the forest. Suddenly, a tree next to the fawn falls over crushing the fawn’s leg and breaking it. The fawn cannot get up or move and just lies there for days and days in agony until it eventually starves to death. Obviously, it is practically impossible to argue that this was caused by free will of humans creating evil. Furthermore, how does the suffering of this poor fawn lead to any greater good (another of the theist’s arguments for the existence of evil)? In fact, what benefit of
any kind could come from this evil?
In summary, the existence of evil in the world runs in complete contrast to the existence of God. The only way God can exist alongside evil is if he is malevolent or he is limited in his power, and since God cannot be either of those things, and evil does in fact exist in the world, we can conclude that there is no God.