13a. The Problem of Evil. Part 1/2.
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Why is the sky blue? Which came first: orange the color or orange the fruit? And why is C3PO afraid of everything? Like, who decided it was a good idea to teach a droid to experience fear?
There are some questions that we ask ourselves, either as kids, or adults, or both. They're questions about weird, everyday things, and they're weird because most of us don't know the answers to them offhand. But most of the time, those questions turn out to be pretty answerable. Like, for the ones I just mentioned, the short answers are: Because of the way photons interact with the molecules in the atmosphere. ...the fruit; And…uh…'cause that's what George Lucas wanted. Maybe because 3PO's a protocol droid, and they need to be able to relate to humans. Though, he could stand to turn his fear settings down a notch.
Now, as you know, philosophers have a soft spot for questions that can never be answered. Most of the time, these puzzles make for great thought experiments – tests of our skills in logic and argument. But there are some questions whose very lack of an answer can be downright troubling.
Unlike the occasional fluke of physics or bit of Star Wars trivia, there's a part of us that really wants, or even needs to have an answer to these things. For the past month or so, we've been exploring the philosophy of religion, and we've been doing it mainly from a theistic perspective, looking into arguments that justify belief in God. But one of the most persistent challenges to god's existence is also the root of one of the most-asked, but least answerable, questions that we, as thinking beings, face. Why is there evil?
[Theme Music]
Evil comes in many forms. And likewise, for philosophers, poses many problems, especially vis a vis the existence of god.
First, there's what's known as the logical problem of evil. Like all rational people, theists can't help but acknowledge that the world is full of evil. And here, we're understanding “evil” to be all manner of bad stuff – like, not just Hitler or Darth Vader or Moriarty. It's everything that's in the vast spectrum of badness, from stubbed toes to plagues and everything in between. Theists and atheists both agree that evil exists in this way. But they disagree about the next part. Many theists believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God. But atheists argue that this creates a contradiction – a set of beliefs that can't all be true at the same time. Because, evil is bad, right – whether it's stubbed toes or genocide or paper cuts or epidemics? So, if there's really an all-knowing God out there, he knows about all the evil. He might even know about it before it happens. And if he's all-powerful, he could stop it. And if he's all-good, then he would want to stop it. And yet he doesn't. The evil continues. Philosophically rational people shouldn't hold inconsistent beliefs, so atheists argue that you're going to have to give something up – and the thing to give up is God. Some theists, however, take a different route. They choose to give up one or more divine attributes. They argue that maybe God isn't powerful enough to stop evil, or maybe he's not knowledgeable enough to know about it, or maybe he's not even good enough to care about stopping it. That might sound weird to some of you, but if you've ever heard someone say that God is envious, or petty, or jealous, that's basically what they're doing – they're acknowledging the possibility that God is not actually good. If you've ever checked out the Old Testament, there is a God there who has some anger issues – one who's not at all opposed to wiping out entire populations just because of some bad behavior. Still, despite this scriptural evidence, many theists are committed to God's omni-attributes, and are thus stuck with a problem. They have to resolve the logical problem of evil and find some way to explain why God would allow evil into the world. And if you can do that, then you are presenting what is known as a theodicy.
A theodicy is an attempt to show that the existence of evil doesn't rule out the possibility of God's existence. Yes, this is such a big deal that there's a word for it. And the most popular theodicy is called The Free Will Defense. This argument holds that God maximized the goodness in the world by creating free beings. And being free means that we have the choice to do evil things – a choice that some of us exercise. This theodicy says that God doesn't create evil, but evil can't be avoided without depriving us of our freedom. And a world without freedom would be a worse place overall.
This explanation preserves God's goodness, because he created the best possible world, and also preserves his omnipotence and omniscience, because, although he does know about evil and could stop it, he has a good reason not to – to ensure our freedom. The problem is, the free will defense really only really addresses what's known as moral evil – or the evil committed, on purpose, by humans. Now, we're certainly responsible for a lot of bad stuff, but you can't blame us for everything. We can't be held responsible for the fact that the plates of the earth sometimes shift, causing destructive earthquakes, or that a storm might knock a tree over that falls onto someone's house. This type of evil – the stuff we're not responsible for – is called natural evil, and the free will defense can't resolve natural evil. Religion is one of those philosophical issues that can make it hard for us to consider anything objectively. That's where fiction comes in handy because fictional stories can let us see how hypothetical people deal with hypothetical situations. And with that in mind, let's go to the Thought Bubble for some Flash Philosophy!
