On God's Omnibenevolence

From guest blogger, Danny W.

I sort of wind-about in this post. My area of concentration, however, is confined to God’s omnibenevolence and questions about defining evil. I begin by setting the scene with one formulation of the Problem of Evil. I detail a possible counterargument to Argument I, and follow with Argument II (an objection to the theist’s hypothetical recasting of premise 4 below). The last few paragraphs are where I’m trying to focus my future paper. I think my aims actually depart from trying to grant the orthodox theist escape from the Problem of Evil; instead, my goal is to seriously question the attribution of classical omnibenevolence to God. I don’t get that far into this, however, and comments or criticisms would be much appreciated! My tangential aim was simply to put more blog-worthy material on the table for discussion…

I want to start by laying out the deductive argument which strongly concludes that it is logically impossible for God (specifically, the Anselmian-conceived god) to exist while evil simultaneously exists. The following valid argument states such a conclusion about God and evil coexisting (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy):

Argument I:

1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn't have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn't know when evil exists, or doesn't have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7. Therefore, God doesn't exist.

There are various counterarguments that can be made against the abovementioned argument. Most theists take special care to preserve premises 1-3; thus, the theist will likely attempt to argue against the framing of premise 4 or 5 and thus refute premises 6 and 7—the conclusion that God doesn’t exist. Several camps of theists will pay special attention to premise 4, and argue that God’s moral perfection does not sufficiently entail Him willing that evil does not occur. The theist who takes this approach might cast God as a utilitarian of sorts; God permits necessary evil, which causally yields a net increase of moral goodness (despite the instantiated evil). Thus, premise 4 would turn into something along the lines of the following:

Premise 4*= If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to maximize moral goodness.

Under the newly-rendered premise 4*, the deductive argument becomes invalid; the existence of evil does not pose a logical contradiction (i.e., an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God could also exist). Again, God’s omnibenevolence (in this case) is manifested as the will to maximize moral goodness—not the will to eliminate all evil.

Most atheists could argue that if we accept Premise 4* as true, then it would need to logically coexist with our other Godly attributes, such as omnipotence. The truth of Premise 4*, however, seems to logically contradict the attribute of omnipotence, as demonstrated in the following argument:

Argument II:

1. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to maximize moral goodness (premise 4*). 
2. God is morally perfect by nature.
3. God has the desire to maximize moral goodness.
4. If maximal moral goodness (or perfect moral goodness) exists—in a logical reality—only good things exist (i.e., no morally undesirable things occur).
5. Morally undesirable things (such as evil) do exist.
6. Maximal moral goodness does not exist.
7. If God is omnipotent, then for every desire X that God has, He brings about the existence of X.
8. God is not omnipotent.

If the theist should take such a route—namely, altering premise 4 as demonstrated—they will be back to square one (as long as my argument is sound).

There are countless objections surrounding the Problem of Evil Argument that focus on the framing of premise 4. Counter-objections soon rise in response to said objections (as demonstrated) due in large part to the murky parameters which characterize omnibenevolence. Isolating a robust definition of omnibenevolence seems to be difficult at best; the lack of a cogent definition put forward by the theist permits the atheist ample imaginative space to characterize it on some type of moral spectrum. Omnibenevolence, seemingly pegged to moral perfection, is equated with desiring no evil or desiring only good (negative and positive definitions, respectively).

Basically, the theist’s dilemma is that it seems logically impossible for omnibenevolence to be defined in any meaningful way, unless an agent only wills for morally good occurrences (i.e., is morally perfect). Is there any other way we can define moral perfection/omni-benevolence? Perhaps it is false that omnibenevolence necessarily entails moral perfection. If that is the case, how would we define omnibenevolence in more accurate terms? What, besides morality, could benevolence be contained by?

However, it seems like most theists make the analytic proposition that omnibenevolence does necessarily entail moral perfection. Can we make analytic proclamations about some unseen, unobserved, difficult to conceive-of predicate such as “omnibenevolence”? If we are going to make an analytic proposition about omnibenevolence, it seems that we cannot actually extend beyond some discussion of ultimate goodness in a moral sense. That being said, it seems that the dilemmas that exist in ethics (e.g., moral realism versus anti-realism) might be significant in determining our ability to characterize God in moral terms (i.e., as necessarily being omnibenevolent).  

In a general sense, to what degree are good, bad, and morality-in-general anthropocentric constructs as opposed to metaphysical reality? Some might argue that we will quickly digress from the main point—God’s omnibenevolence. However, given the fact that omnibenevolence seems to rest so heavily on our conception of morality, understanding the tacit connections between omnibenevolence and morality seems a worthy goal.

From a dialectical perspective on the original Problem of Evil argument, it seems that premise 5—the idea of evil—might also be open to questioning (as we saw in class). Our inability to hone in on a common definition is a red flag that our definition of evil requires careful consideration. Is evil something metaphysically real and perhaps distinct from something that we can plainly observe from our natural surroundings. We observe it in events and actions in our lives, but what exactly are we observing? My main goal for my paper are to explore some epistemological concerns with evil and how we as humans come to know it—if we can actually know it, as opposed to just observing something very undesirable to us. Perhaps our understanding of good and evil is a product of social conditioning, a binary that has been etched out and cultivated in Western thought since the origins of Abrahamic religions. What if evil can be described naturally, as say a choice based on the agent’s degree of “empathy” at a neurological level. For example, could we describe Hitler’s evil as a reflection of neural circuitry (brought about by Hitler’s genetic makeup and experiences) which left him with strong desires for power, delusions about what is just, and zero empathy for the people he slaughtered. Under such mental framework, Hitler then went out and did the unthinkable; what’s wrong with that conception of evil? Or, evil could be some non-natural entity or force superimposed on natural events and we “observe” it simply by intuition. If so, what is the epistemological characterization of that connection between our intuitions and some non-natural realm of events? That is where I’m headed. I don’t have arguments for anything yet, but this seems to be getting at what evil actually is. Now, let’s discuss!

P.S.--I thought that this article provides a fairly leveled discussion about evil as a natural versus non-natural entity; however, it is not philosophically-rigorous in its form or intent.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_spectator/2011/09/does_evil_exist_neuroscientists_say_no_.html