Does the Problem of Evil Provide a Defeater for the Existence of God - Essay Example

?Does the problem of evil provide a defeater for the existence of God? In the Judaeo-Christian tradition the existence of a personal God who is absolutely good is a central tenet. He is also absolutely powerful, and the first cause of everything that exists because he created the world out of nothing. Theologians have noted also that the scriptures of this religious tradition also speak in quite strong terms of the existence of evil. Philosophers and some theologians have also pointed out that there is much that happens in the world, including wars, diseases, natural disasters and all kinds of pain and suffering which either are evil in themselves, or demonstrate evil in action. One of the major functions of religious belief has been to give human beings a structure and a set of codes to help them minimize their exposure to this evil, by concentrating on God and keeping themselves pure and well away from temptations and sins. This paper traces some of the main arguments that have been used throughout history to explain the problem of evil and concludes that it can never be fully explained due to the difference between human and divine ability to understand things. In the simplest terms there is a basic contradiction in the fact that both God and evil exist. We can accept that it is not possible to know where God came from, since he is eternal, having existed always, existing now, and going on to exist for ever into the future. But what about evil? It seems unlikely that a God who is absolutely good would actually create evil. Similarly, if he came across evil arising out of what he created, then it seems logical that a God who is good would eliminate evil from the world, or would prevent it from occurring in the first place. How can a good God stand by and watch terrible injustices, suffering of innocents, or indeed be the cause of these evils? This is a big moral and logical problem which has been tacked from several different angles. From an atheist perspective the answer is quite straightforward: the absence of intervention to stop evil from happening proves that there is no such thing as an absolutely powerful and absolutely good God, as defined in the Judaeo Christian tradition. One solution to the apparent contradiction between the existence of evil and the existence of God, is to argue that God and evil are two separate and different things, and that evil is in some mysterious way the “opposite” of God. This line of reasoning preserves the absolute goodness of God, and means he is not contaminated by the bad things that happen in the world. From this position it can be argued that that evil is a necessary thing because without it, we would not be able to understand the goodness of God. An analogy from the physical world would be the relationship between light and darkness. It is possible to conceive of absolute light, and absolute darkness, but in these two extreme situations we would be blind, and not able to appreciate anything in the middle of them properly. This is quite a promising line of argument, because it places the problem in the limited, physical nature of man, rather than the realm of logic or ideas. The physical world, unlike the world of pure ideas, is not an absolute situation, and it exists between the extremes of good and evil, in such a way that they set up a contrast, allowing us to operate in the grey area in the middle, an by implication make choices to orient ourselves towards the one or the other extreme. In the history of Christianity this kind of thinking was put forward as a suggestion but quickly condemned, and it is since known as the “Manichean heresy.” The problem with this line of argument is that it waters down the essential nature of the divine being, in order to explain away the problem of evil. This solution also implies either that evil was co-existent with God from the beginning, so that good and evil define the nature of God, or that God in some way relinquished some of his omnipotence when he created the earth, and allowed evil to take on existence without him, and in a way set itself up in opposition to him. In modern times the revival of interest in concepts like angels and demons, vampires and witches suggests that people may be returning to these dualist notions. When belief in the absolute goodness of God wanes, then belief in these counter-forces tends to emerge in its place, and people see the world as being at the mercy of a struggle between two equal and opposite forces. This makes logical sense as an explanation but it cannot be a suitable argument to explain the existence of God because it limits his power and implies that there are other divine creatures beside him, and these two implications are counter to the belief that God is the only true God and absolutely powerful. Instead of questioning the nature of God, Thomas Aquinas questioned the nature of evil. According to Thomas Aquinas, evil is not actually a created thing, and so we do not need to worry about whether God, or anybody else, actually created it. He conceives evil as a lack, rather than a thing: “As the term good signifies ‘perfect being’ so the term evil signifies nothing else than ‘privation of perfect being.” (Thomas Aquinas Compendium Theologiae, 114, 125). What we call evil, is then actually just the absence of good. This is a clever argument but it fails to convince many people because it seems like a linguistic technicality rather than a true observation about the world. It does not ring true in human experience. Quite a lot of the evil that occurs in the world is caused by human beings exercising their free will. This sets up a tension between God’s goodness, and human evil. Judaeo Christian theology sees a temporary phase in which human free will prevails, but an ultimate long term situation where justice is done, or salvation is made, and good prevails over evil. In some ways this is like earlier reasoning by Aristotle, which distinguishes between the permanent things in the universe, which do not have a physical form, and the things which run along a course through time, such as animals and humans, who live and die. It will all work out in the end and good will prevail, but for the time being there is some tension in the physical world. Although Aristotle would not have believed in a single omnipotent God, he did argue for some absolutes which remain fixed. Paradoxically, it is the pagan philosophy of Aristotle which seems to give the best hope for finding a solution to the existence of evil which best fits the requirements of a good and omnipotent God. The modern world has a great belief in the laws of science, and this also coincides with Aristotle’s theories about nature and the ordering of the spheres in the universe. Succeeding generations of scientists have constantly changed the content of the laws and principles that guide the universe, but they all agree that there are such basic laws and principles. It is possible that this whole issue of a good God and the existence of evil is one of these laws, only that it applies across matter and ideas, body and spirit, in a way that cannot easily be expressed in human language. In physics, some entities appear to be both a wave and a particle. There is an underlying immutable law that explains these things but we have not yet learned it or had it revealed to us. From the perspective of eternity it is possible that concepts like justice, which imply a balancing out of good and evil actions, are both good and terribly painful for human beings who have sinned. Things may not look good from here and now, but this may change from a different perspective, or measured by a different scale. Perhaps the argument can only really be proved when all the facts are known, and for that we would have to be omniscient. In the meantime, the best we can do is accept the paradox and hold on to the absolute goodness and omnipotence of God despite the troubling existence of evil in the world. References Aquinas, Thomas. Compendium Theologiae. Read More