Some Thoughts on the Problem of Evil

From guest blogger, Shani.

The existence of evil in the world becomes problematic to theists since most theological texts claim that god is an all-powerful, all knowing and all good being (PKG). This assertion is problematic since if god is in fact PKG, then why would he ever allow gratuitous evils to occur? It seems to go completely against his nature. I would like to argue that the only way to remove the problem of evil is for theists to give up an absolutist approach to god’s capabilities. God cannot be PKG and be an omnipotent being who can do anything whether it be logically possible or not at the same time. Theists may not like the idea of giving up absolutism since they may think doing so undermines the idea that god is omnipotent and all-powerful. In my opinion it does no such thing. By removing the idea of absolutism we are not bringing gods capabilities down to a human level rather, we are simply purifying the definition of his being. If we take a non-absolutist approach and say that god can only do things which is possible for him to do, his possibilities and powers being beyond our comprehension, than we are still able to assert that god is PKG. Not only is he PKG but he is now also in his purest and most benevolent form. We can now take all gratuitous evils and place the blame on another entity that has the capability to create chaos and cause beings to suffer mercilessly. The blame can either be placed on humans or on Satan but either way god has not lost power. God has not lost power or authority since if god were PKG he would not be committing these horrific acts anyways, such gratuitous evils would be logically incoherent for him to commit. Therefore we have simply purified the definition of his being to one that is even more benevolent and merciful. In my opinion, giving up absolutism actually makes for a stronger and more praise worthy god than a god who can do anything but is not necessarily PKG. 

Gratuitous Evils

From guest blogger, Adam.

Some people disagree that there is evil in the world, so there would be no argument to oppose God if someone held firm with this belief. I would say that most people agree that there is evil in this world. Evil can be both necessary (ie evil that brings about greater good) and gratuitous (ie innocent fawn suffers in the woods for no human to witness). I argue that for God to be all-PKG he would not allow so much of these gratuitous and natural evils to exist. Either God does not possess the power to change and/or alter the physical laws he is said to have created, or God is not all good. These types of gratuitous evils (fawn) serve no purpose to make humans or the world a better place. It is not part of human free will to chose whether the fawn suffers or not, it is simply natural evil. Some people could object that there is no such thing as gratuitous evil, and the things that we do not cause or did not witness, we could have witnessed had we made other choices in exerting our free will. To this I would say that this amount of natural evil is too much. I agree that some compassion and good may come from evil, but there is no reason for there to be this amount of it, if there exists an all-Powerful, all-Knowing, and especially all-Good God.

In Defense of Evil

From guest blogger, Maham.

God’s existence is most often called into question with the problem of evil: “If God exists, and he is good, then how can he allow all the terrible things to happen in the world that happen?” From this it is ultimately concluded that either God does not exist or God is not good. The arguments that we raise in defense of this attack then, all entail some of the following usually:

1. God created the best possible world
2. Evil is not something inherently “bad” but simply the absence of good
3. God does not support the existence of evil, he simply allows it to exist
4. Satan is largely responsible for most evil etc.

All these positions further raise questions about the extent of God’s power, God’s freedom, God’s “sense” in creating Satan, what “grand” plan is God taking us towards that we can not see, etc. Wherein the end of that attack will simply result in someone raising the question of the seven-year-old child drowning or getting cancer and dying; where no explanation from God’s end or any end helps justify the need for such an event to ever happen. Silver linings is not going to suffice for the people who have been directly affected by the evil, attackers will gleefully spout.


In the midst of this, I want to consider perhaps a radically foolish position. One that I feel is necessary for us to be able to have the world that we do have and appreciate it; rather than advocating for better worlds that are well and good in theory but will always be impossible to achieve.

Evil is necessary. For human beings to understand the world as they currently do, with our un-quenching appreciation and hunt for the “good,” evil and suffering is unimaginably necessary. I fail to see how we can simply have or even recognize good, without an intimate knowledge of evil and suffering.


The appreciation of life stemmed from when the first insult to it was struck by it being taken in cold blood; the appreciation for one’s own freedom was realized when human dignity and honor was indelicately attacked. We assume that these things were present inherently within us from day one, which is an unwise assumption to make. Appreciation for the good was realized only when evil came into existence as stark contrast.


My position doesn’t call for evil to be allowed to run rampant, far from it. It is why we also have accountability, justice systems and moral responsibility as well. They are there to curb human evil, progressive technology to help against natural evil and so on. But my position at least explains why evil necessarily exists, must exist, and why we cannot possibly call on God to have made a world without it. For such a world to exist would not be as we see the world today, or even what we wager the many possible worlds will be, but a utopia difficult to live in.

The Value of Evil Forces

From guest blogger, Daniel.

The obvious question and objection to Satan and his cohorts being the cause of evil in the world, as brought up in Alvin Platinga’s paper "Satan," is why an omnipotent, all-good deity would allow evil forces to exist in the world from the onset. It is even stated that a creature who has more power, even if it is used for evil purposes, is more valuable to their world than a creature who is less powerful but uses its freedom and what power it does have for the good. The term “valuable” is an interesting one with regards to this topic. If a being has more control over the occurrences in their world, for better or for worse, then they are indeed more valuable in that respect. However, we must look at the world valuable as adding value to the whole rather than prescribing it independently based on a creature’s power and freedom first and then gauging how it contributes and uses that power second. Looking at the word valuable from this angle the argument can be made that even the smallest creature with the smallest amount of freedom and power, if used for good, is more valuable than any creature with a greater amount of power and freedom that works against God’s values.

The analogy used to explain the suffering caused to the people of the twentieth century Soviet Union to achieve a Marxist utopia can also be scaled to explain ‘natural evils.’ These maladies, natural disasters, disease etc., cannot be attributed to human action. Perhaps it is likely that God created Satan and his cohorts to do what he cannot, namely the evil acts that must sometimes be inflicted as a means to an end that is only known to God. Take the great flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or any of the other ‘bad’ natural things that happened in the bible that humans would not know were for the greater good unless God had told us so; the cause for God’s allowing of these events could not possibly be known to humans and as such we perceive unexplained natural disasters as bad things. There is, at least some likelihood, that God created and allows these creatures to operate for reasons we are simply not able to comprehend.

The Problem of Evil and the Free Will Defense

From guest blogger, Ezekial. 

When considering the problem of evil, a common answer is that the granting humans the free will and moral agency to make moral choices is necessary to bringing about the greatest good or perfection, and that makes evil a logical necessity of granting humans this freedom. In this view, it must be the case that it is at least possible that the amount of freedom god gives us is just the right amount.

Being in the “sweet spot” might mean that we lack the freedom (of will or action) for gratuitous evil or capacity to cause suffering, but we have enough freedom to do enough damage to make our morally good actions significant.

Consider a world in which god gave us more freedom and power, such that we can cause more pain and suffering than we do now. Perhaps we have the abilities of super-rape, murder, or the power to harm people more so than we do now. It could just be that people are more apt or willing to use the powers to do moral evils than they do in the current world. Certainly we can imagine a world in which there is more suffering as a result of human conduct, and that should be reason enough to believe that god did not give us too much freedom.

Now consider a world in which we have less freedom, such that we either don’t have the capacity for raping, murdering, and other tier 1 moral sins, or we are just predisposed against those actions so much so that it is very unlikely for a person to be moved to such actions. In this world there would be less or little suffering compared to reality, but the argument could be made that lacking the freedom to commit these evils makes the good less meaningful. God allows people into heaven because they are good, more or less. So if people don’t really have to make choices between good and evil because they are always good and have to very much against their nature to commit evil, it doesn’t make sense for god to arbitrate people to heaven or hell, because people lack the sufficient moral agency to be worthy of such a judgement. It would be like God making everyone without the capacity for evil and then rewarding them for not being evil.

There are many other arguments regarding the evil in the world that can be leveled against god, but it should at least seem plausible that god gave humans the right amount of freedom because we can think of possible worlds that are worse as a result of having more or less freedom than our world. 

Plantinga, Satan, and the Problem of Evil

From guest blogger, Joshua. 

In Alvin Plantinga’s “Satan” Alvin says, “The more free creatures resemble God the more valuable they are and the more valuable are the worlds in which they exist” (Plantinga, 139). Alvin Plantinga believes it is better to have free creatures in the world that have the ability to do bad things then to have limited choices. I think Plantinga’s assumption of more free creatures being a good thing is wrong. The underlying assumptions Plantinga is making by saying more freedom is better is that many choices are better then one.

First off Plantinga makes the assumption a world with free creatures is better then one with limited creatures. Plantinga makes this assumption because he needs to explain the necessity of evil in the world. Plantinga uses free will to account for the two different types of evil in the world. The first kind of evil is an egregious evil. An example of an egregious evil would be someone torturing another person for fun. This action is not justified which is what makes it an egregious evil. Plantinga’s assumption though justifies this kind of action. The reason the person is being tortured is because having a world with free creatures is a good thing. For Plantinga, the good of having choices outweighs any of the evil that could be done because of free will.  The 2^nd evil Plantinga has to account for is a natural evil. A natural evil is one where no human has a choice in it. For example a natural evil would be a tornado or volcano erupting that kills many people. No human was the cause of these things happening, yet it seems these occurrences are simply evil. Plantinga says the cause of all these natural evils is the Devil and his cohorts. Plantinga then uses his free will assumption to justify the existence of Satan. Plantinga says “God therefore created a world in which there are creatures with […] a great deal of power, including the power to work against God and the freedom to turn their backs against God” (Plantinga, 139). For the world to be a full of free will there needs to be a creature with the power and freedom of Satan. Therefore these evils of tornados and volcano’s are simply Satan acting against God’s will. The assumption Plantinga makes about free will is his way of explaining away the evils of the world, and getting God off the hook as it were for the evil actions going on around humans.

Plantinga’s assumption of people being more free relies on the underlying assumption that many choices are better than one. At first glance this underlying assumptions seems correct to most people. When I go to eat dinner, if I only have pizza as a choice it doesn't seem as good as having the choice between pizza, spaghetti, or hamburgers. Well this seems to be a slam-dunk case; it seems better to have even one more choice. Throwing nachos in with the other three selections seems better then having just the three selections. If this is true, you could keep expounding until you had 100 choices for food, lets look at this example. If you had 100 choices you would have to look at all the different options and evaluate which one you would want to choose. Most people would see all these choices as to overwhelming and wouldn't know which one to choose. They would feel pressured to try and make the “right” decision in this case. I say, “right” because there doesn't seem to be an inherently right decision here. With 100 of different options to weigh it might seem impossible to know which one to choose and if the decision you are making is the best one. It would seem having the a more limited array of options would make things easier on most people, and have them not feel as pressured by all the different decisions one could make. In some cases then people would say fewer options are better, and that having the fullest or more freedom isn’t necessarily a better thing in every case. If this is true, then Plantinga’s assumption about more freedom being better is no longer valid.

On the Necessity of Evil

From guest blogger, Isaac.

In class we have been discussing the problem of evil and how if God is a perfectly good and all powerful being, how could he let evil exist. I think this problem can be solved by showing that evil necessarily must exist if a perfectly good being exists. My argument starts with these premises.

1.      Good exists

2.      God is perfectly good and is not anything other than good

3.      Anything that exists necessarily must have something from which it can be distinguished

4.      Evil is anything that is not: good and/or something lacking moral value

5.      There is at least one thing that exists that would be considered good in some way and that thing is not God

If (1) and (3) are true, then there is necessarily something from which good can be distinguished. If (4) is true, then evil is what we distinguish from good and it also necessarily exists. Now, if we take (2) to be true, then there is necessarily something from which God can be distinguished from. God in this sense is distinguishable from anything that is not perfectly good or more precisely, anything that contains some evil or has no moral value. In order for God to create something other than himself, he must then necessarily create something that contains at least some evil in it or something that has no moral value. If God has created a world in which (5) is true, then there is necessarily at least one thing that exists that has some evil in it. So, if God is a morally perfect, perfectly good being, He must necessarily create evil in the world.

This is a pretty "good" argument but there are many problems that are left untouched. The first is that this argument doesn't tackle the problem of evil on different magnitudes. Even if one is convinced that this argument is correct, it doesn't explain problems of why God allows there to be genocide, murder, torture, etc. One could also say that we could have all been created to be one notch under the goodness of God and if God is omnipotent he could still of made us this way.

There are also ways in which people could argue against this argument. The first being that (1) could be rejected. This however seems to give up morals in general. The argument doesn't depend on any one conception of the good; any conception will do. Another argument could be that God is not something outside of our existence and he is fact all the good that exists in the world. This criticism would depend on rejecting (5) and would bring up a problem of God's omnipotence because it seems the criticism is suggesting something other than god is creating all the evil, plus god cannot create something other than himself.

Can't wait to hear what you guys think. If you could help me with expanding my argument to cover other problems with evil and also some better criticisms of the argument I would really appreciate it.

Necessary Evil and the Problem of Evil

From guest blogger, Andrea.

For my first paper, I want to write about a response to the problem of evil. So the problem of evil says that if there is a god that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, why then is there evil in the world. Wouldn't a perfectly omnibenevolent god not want evil and suffering in the world?

A possible theist response is one that explains the presence of evil. Suffering is a necessary evil that results from evil events happening around us and to us. Evil can be anything “bad” and can be measured on a large scale. Why does god allow us to suffer? He uses it as a learning experience for his creations. Suffering is a stress in our lives and we need stress to survive. For example, on a biological level, we need stress and resistance for our hearts to keep beating. Muscles need stress and resistance so they do not experience atrophy or deterioration. Are these necessary struggles “exercises” to keep us strong mentally and/or emotionally or to keep our faith strong? For believers, this may be the case, to keep faith strong, but what about the nonbelievers? Why do nonbelievers experience suffering and stresses? Does god just want the best for his creations whether they believe in him/her or not? Keeping the presence of suffering and evil to create suffering is necessary to “build” the person; if not in faith then….character?

Our society has looked well on the individual who is always positive and happy all the time, but more adoration goes to the hero. The individual that has seen adversity/sufferings, experienced them, and has overcome them.

I think this is just a positive spin on suffering and presence of evil for the theist. I saw similarities in the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer. In his writings on the idea of happiness, he explains that individuals do not like to be happy. The idea of complete, perfect happiness scares us because once we reach that level, there is nothing after that can make us that happy. So in order to make sure we haven’t reached that level yet, we create stresses in our life, like we do in biology, to keep us going. The stresses create a distance from happiness and makes us appreciate good or happiness that much more. He plays on Darwin’s idea of survival of the fittest. Only the strongest will be able to overcome the stresses in front of us.

What did you guys think of the theist response to the problem of evil I provided? My paper wants to focus on the validity of the explanation the theist has provided, so if you have criticisms for the argument, or some kind of connection with the response and the survival idea, please let me know.