Evil and Suffering Revision

Moral and natural evil – human free will Moral and natural evil – human free will? Natural evil is more difficult to justify?

Logical problem of evil (logical inconsistency) God is omnipotent God is omnibenevolent Evil exists Evidential problem of evil There are known facts about evil that are evidence against the existence of God. Mainly two types of evil which supply such evidence: Evil that is overwhelming in quantity and quality Evil that is pointless because it serves no useful purpose

Theodies – Yea or Nay? Theodicy Strengths Weaknesses Augustinian Augustine Plantinga Davies Schleiermacher Irenaean Irenaeus Hick Vardy Phillips Dostoyevsky Free Will Defence Swinburne Hick (developed it) Mackie Flew Process Theology See article/essay on box.com Whitehead Griffin Monism Baker Eddy Leibniz Spinoza Logic!

The Problem of Evil… “Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to; or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is malevolent. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how come evil is in the world?” -- Epicurus

The inconsistent triad Mackie… …said that the only solution to the Problem of Evil was to remove one of the three points, meaning: God’s not all-powerful God’s not all-loving There is no evil The inconsistent triad

There is a sufficient reason why God allows evil to exist What are they? Are they sufficient enough?

AUGUSTINIAN: RESPONSIBILITY FOR EVIL Created beings have misused their freedom – Angels and/or human beings Moral evil is their fault Natural evil is an inevitable consequence (punishment) for that moral evil [1] Evil is non-being. God only creates good. So evil is good ‘gone wrong’ or to be found at the edge of existence – evil is a privation of good. [2] Aesthetic analogy: some parts are ugly but the whole picture is more beautiful because of them. [3] Principle of plenitude: it is better to have a universe ‘full’ of all kinds of beings, even if some of them suffer or create evil. Our freedom to come to God and our ability to reason about Him are either radically impaired or totally lost by the Fall. The universe is no longer as God intended it to be. No longer a suffering free Paradise. Now it needs to be saved by God’s grace through redemption.

However, in his infinite love and grace, he sent his one and only son, Jesus Christ, to take the punishment for all of our sin and to die on the cross so that all those who believe and accept can be saved. Check out John 3:16

IRENAEAN OVERVIEW God is seen as ultimately responsible for the evil in the universe. Moral evil is the fault of free human beings whom God has created and permits to sin. God has deliberately put natural evil in the world to create a ‘vale of soul making’. Human beings were created for fellowship with God. Look to the heavenly future to justify the current situation. The end justifies the evil and suffering of the present. Evil & suffering will be ended one day; God brings good out of evil More-or-less as God intended it to be. A ‘vale of soul-making’ with real temptations, risks and ambiguities. The sort of world in which we can freely develop faith and virtue We learn obedience through suffering in co-operation with God’s grace-through-creation.

Hick’s developments of Irenaeus Hick argues that goodness which has been developed by free choice is better than goodness which is just given to humans. If God wanted humans to be genuinely loving, he had to give us the opportunity to develop this for ourselves – otherwise our love would be valueless. We would not learn anything morally (and therefore grow as people) unless we experienced difficulties or challenges. The world is ‘a vale of soul-making’ (borrowed from Keats); we may not understand what happens to us now, but all will be resolved after death. In the after life, people continue with their growth and development towards a relationship with God, and in the end, everyone will be saved. Humans had to be created imperfect; humans had to be distanced from God; the natural world could not be a paradise

Criticisms of Augustine… Schleiermacher – logically impossible for sin to have entered a perfect world. This suggests that evil created itself out of nothing! Science – Augustine says perfection descends into chaos through sin. Evolution and Big Bang say it’s the other way around! Science – Biologically impossible for us to all be seminally present in Adam. Genesis is just a creation myth – it is not necessarily objectively true. Schleiermacher – If there is no knowledge of good and evil how can humans be free to obey or disobey God? Schleiermacher – Either the world was not perfect to start with or God made it go wrong: God’s responsibility, not humans’! Hell – If God created hell then he must have known it was all going to go wrong – why didn’t he stop it from happening? (malicious God?)

Criticisms of Irenaeus… Swinburne – the world needs evil to develop morally. However there are 3 awkward facts… Heaven for Everyone – is this just and fair? Does it not make being good pointless? 1 – Virtuous people who haven’t suffered 2 – Those left embittered and dehumanised by suffering 3 – Difficult to square with Jesus Challenges – Challenges to the world don’t always result in development (e.g. holocaust) D.Z. Phillips – Love can never be expressed by allowing suffering to happen. ‘What are we to say of the child dying from cancer? If this has been ‘done’ to anyone that is bad enough, but to be done for a purpose planned from eternity – that is the deepest evil. If god is this kind of agent, He cannot justify His actions and His evil nature is revealed.’

Process Theology (developed by Griffin) This theodicy rests upon the assertion that God is not omnipotent, and therefore did not create the universe The universe is an uncreated process which includes God – He is part of the world and is bound by natural laws; He is present in the world with us and suffers with us God’s role in creation was to start off the evolutionary process. But God no longer has total control since humans are free to ignore God, and God cannot force our choices (His power is limited). God is not responsible for moral evil because He can only do what is logically possible, and it is not logically possible to force free individuals to obey moral laws. Given a choice between this universe and no universe the former is preferable, and so this justifies God’s work

The Free Will Defence It was necessary for God to give us free will Free will necessarily entails the possibility of evil The world is an environment that enables humans to be humans The world provides true freedom in the form of real choices (between good and harm) – without which we would not be free or human Richard Swinburne - Analogy of God as a good parent who allows an older child greater freedom in order to grow up Death is essential to this argument because it means that life, and the chances that each life contains, are limited. Only in a limited lifespan can we have genuine responsibility for our actions

Mackie – Free Will Defence One of Mackie’s main reasons for thinking God does not exist is the problem of evil. He produces his own version of the Free Will Defence with the aim of showing that it does not work – however it is used often to show that it might actually be the right explanation for why God allows evil to exist. He refers to first, second and third order goods and evils to show that the FWD says that God is justified in allowing evil in the universe because it permits the freedom to choose or reject the good (teaches us to be morally responsible)

Mackie’s criticism of the FWD If there is no logical possibility in a man choosing the good on one, or on several occasions, there cannot be a logical possibility in his freely choosing the good on every occasion. God was not, then, faced with a choice between making innocent automata and making beings who in acting freely, would sometimes go wrong: there was open to him the obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely but would always do right. Clearly his failure to avail himself of this possibility is inconsistent with his being omnipotent and wholly good.

Mackie’s argument It is logically possible for a person to make free, good choices, all of the time God could have created humans so that they would only make free, good choice God did not so do THEREFORE Either God lacks the power to do so OR God is not loving enough to do so Either way, the FWD fails In conclusion, God does not exist

Alvin Plantinga’s defence of the free will defence Platinga claims that God allows evil to exist for two ‘Morally Sufficient reasons’ (MSR 1 and MSR 2). MSR1 – explains the ‘logical’ problem of evil MSR2 – explains natural evil.

IN MSR 1 Platinga presupposes the view of free will known as ‘libertarianism’ – that is that we are totally free to make our decisions. Libertarianism free will is ‘morally significant’ kind of free will. This means that people have the chance to put into practice Mackie’s second order goods of sympathy, love compassion etc. This kind of freedom is the most important, because it means that people are morally responsible for their decisions. He aims to show that there is no logically possible world in which God could have created beings who would always make free, good choices.

Monism It is the belief that the universe is a single, harmonious unity that is good Evil is not a reality – for if everything is good, evil must be a mere illusion in our minds We would recognise evil as good if only we could see the whole picture

Gottfried Leibniz Evil must be an illusion because this world must be the best of all possible worlds. This is because God, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, could not have chosen any other. God allowed the illusion of suffering because only God can be perfect and therefore the world is not truly perfect

WHY do we suffer the illusion of evil? Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Because we make two mistakes when assessing things: 1) we assess things in terms of their usefulness to ourselves. This bias means we do not always recognise the value of things. 2) we assume that there are general norms to which humans and animals conform (e.g we consider a shrivelled tree and a sinful man to be defective). However, if we considered the universe objectively, we should accept that each thing has a unique value: ‘All things are necessarily what they are, and in Nature, there is no good and evil.’

Explain two defences of God in the light of evil OR Explain the free will defence ‘Natural evil is a greater challenge to faith in God than moral evil.’ Assess.