The Argument from Evil
- Brian Ballard
- Apr 3, 2020
- 8 min read
Updated: Nov 14, 2020
How could a good and powerful God allow such evils to occur? Sometimes, this question merely voices our pain, no more precise than a cry or a shudder. But other times, it gestures at an argument, even if by the wide sweep of its arm.
There are many versions of the argument from evil, but all of them have this claim at their core, that the existence of evil in some way casts doubt upon the existence of God. The argument is thus a challenge for theism, the view that God exists, perfect in goodness, power, and wisdom.
By evil, I don’t mean witches and vampires and Grendel’s mother. I mean, quite simply, bad stuff. That includes of course the very bad stuff—examples of which are readily imagined—but also the slightly bad stuff, the bee stings and bad sequels. Really, any bad stuff can get the argument going.
Now, much of the bad stuff is human suffering, and when we suffer, when others suffer, there is no promise that a well-reasoned response to the argument from evil will be of any use. When the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes, “grief has made us unbelieving,” she is not talking about the argument from evil. She is talking about actual suffering, and the ways it can damage one’s trust in God. How to recover that trust and keep it healthy and sane in the midst of sorrow is a problem far profounder than what I wish to address here. I’m only addressing the argument from evil, a little patch of reasoning.
The argument
How does the argument go? The most straightforward version would look like this:
1. Evil occurs.
2. If God exists, evil would not occur.
3. So, God does not exist.
This argument is valid (the conclusion follows from the premises). So the only question is whether the premises are true. If they are, the conclusion is irresistible. Which premise, then, is most open to challenge?
Premise 1
Premise 1 is hard to reject, since it is obvious that bad stuff happens. Even so, some theists try to counter premise 1 like this:
The atheist cannot assert 1, because without God there’s no such thing as evil. This premise actually presupposes the very God it sets out to disprove!
But this is a lame response. For one, it isn’t clear why the atheist can’t believe in evil. Maybe this can be argued, but it shouldn’t be assumed.
More importantly, the theist himself believes premise 1. Thus, the argument from evil is a problem about the internal consistency of the theist’s own beliefs. Does the theist, by believing in both God and evil, believe an unlikely combination, perhaps even a contradiction? This question has nothing to do with whether the atheist can believe in evil.
There's another way some theists try to reject premise 1:
Since God uses bad stuff to bring about good stuff, the bad stuff actually isn’t bad at all. It only seems bad to us from our puny perspective.
But this response fairs no better.
First, it is just really obvious that some things are bad. Torturing someone just to see what it’s like is bad.
Second, this response assumes consequentialism, the view that whether something is good depends always and entirely on the results it produces. Certainly, some philosophers are consequentialists, but the view is highly debatable and shouldn't just be taken for granted.
Third, most theists hold outright that some things really are evil and don’t merely seem so. Certainly, Christians hold this. The Bible depicts God as being pretty unhappy about evils like greed and oppression. And that is precisely why Christ’s sacrifice was necessary, because some things really are evil, and evil really does matter.
In sum, then, it is best for the theist just to grant premise 1. Attacking here is a tactical error.
Premise 2
By far, premise 2 is where the action is at. This is what the theist should focus on.
Why accept premise 2? To paraphrase David Hume, the thought seems to be:
If God were all-good, he would want to prevent evil. And if God were all-powerful, he would be able to. Thus, from the assumption that an all-good, all-powerful God exists, we should expect to find no evil in the world.
This is the reasoning that seems to lie behind premise 2 (if God exists, evil would not occur).
However, this reasoning hides an important assumption:
If God wants to do something, and He is able to, then He will.
But why think this? After all, consider the more general version of this claim:
For any person—God, human, or otherwise—if that person wants to do something, and he is able to, then he will.
This claim is surely false. There are all sorts of things that I want to do, that I am able to do, but which I refrain from doing. I want to eat a doughnut. I am able to stop by the bakery after work. But I refrain from doing this, because I wish to live to a ripe old age. I want the doughnut, but I want something else more.
Preventing evil might be a bit like eating a doughnut. Maybe God wants to prevent evil, but wants something else even more. Another way to put this: Maybe preventing evil would be good, but maybe allowing it would be even better for some reason.
What reason? That, in fact, is the crux of the issue.
Justifying reasons
If God has a good enough reason for allowing evil, then it might not be true that He would prevent it if He could. Such a reason we may call a justifying reason, a reason that justifies God in allowing evil.
Consider an analogy. A father knows his kid gets picked on. But he also knows his kid needs to learn how to solve his own problems. So one day, the father pulls up after school, waits in his car, sees his kid crossing the green. And some other kid starts teasing him. The father wants to get involved. He wants to give that little punk a piece of his mind. But he doesn’t. He knows his son needs to figure this out for himself. It’s a growing experience, one his son needs in order to become a thriving adult.
About this father, we might craft an argument just like the argument from evil: If he were a good parent, he would prevent his son’s suffering. But this is surely false. Sometimes, allowing their kids to suffer is exactly what good parents do. The father in our example has a justifying reason, namely, his child’s personal growth.
God may be just like the father waiting after school—pained by the suffering of His children but aware of reasons to let it persist. Now, God’s justifying reasons may not be the same as the father’s. No doubt, we could have an interesting discussion about that. The point is rather that, if God has justifying reasons, whatever they may be, then it is false that He would eliminate evil as far as He could.
Accordingly, the argument from evil hinges on the crucial claim that God does not have any justifying reasons for allowing evil. This is the hidden assumption behind premise 2.
The auxiliary argument
Why accept the hidden assumption that God lacks any justifying reasons? The idea behind it would seem be something like this:
When we reflect on the evils in the world, they simply baffle us. We cannot imagine any reason for allowing them, any good that could possibly outweigh them.
This suggests the following argument:
4. We cannot think of what justifying reasons God could have for allowing evil.
5. If we cannot think of what justifying reasons God could have for allowing evil, then there are no such reasons.
6. So, there are no justifying reasons God could have for allowing evil.
The argument from evil—at least, in the form we are considering—requires this as an auxiliary argument. And there are three ways a theist can respond.
Three responses the theist can make
Response #1: Theodicy. Some theists reject premise 4. Those who do so give a theodicy, an account of what God’s reasons are or might be. They attempt, in Milton’s famous words, to “justify the ways of God to men.”
The most common theodicy appeals to free will:
God allows evil, because evil had to be genuinely possible for there to be free creatures like us. And this freedom is a great good, a good that compensates for the evils it makes possible.
This is the so-called free will theodicy. Like any theodicy, it does three things:
I. It identifies a good (free will).
II. It argues this good could not be had without the genuine possibility of evil.
III. It argues that this good is good enough to compensate for the evils in the world.
Any theodicy will need to do these three things; whether the free will theodicy does them, or does them well at any rate, I leave for you to decide.
Response #2: Skeptical theism. Not all theists think theodicies are the way to go. Instead, we might reject premise 5. Those who do so are called skeptical theists: Even if God had a justifying reason, we wouldn’t be the first to know what it was. Perhaps His reasons for allowing evil are simply beyond us. If so, the fact that we can’t think of them is irrelevant to whether they are there.
Imagine I ask you if there is a giraffe in the room. You answer No. Why? Because you can’t see any giraffe. Here, the fact that you can’t see it seems like a good argument against its being there. But imagine instead we are walking through the jungle, and I ask you if we are being stalked by a super-stealthy jaguar. You answer No. Why? Because you can’t see any jaguars. Here, that’s a rather lousy argument. What makes the difference? Surely, it is that giraffes are the sorts of things you would see if they were there; super-stealthy jaguars are not.
Are God’s reasons more like giraffes or jaguars? It seems correct to answer jaguars. Or at least, that’s what the skeptical theist thinks. And that would mean the fact that we can’t see God’s reasons is no evidence at all against Him having them. Premise 5 is false.
Theodicy and skeptical theism—these are the two main responses to the argument from evil. However, there is a third response that is often neglected, a response that actually requires far less of the theist.
Response #3: Requesting evidence. Both theodicy and skeptical theism aim to show that a premise is false; they go on the offensive. But it isn't the theist's job to show the premises are false. It is the atheist's job to show the premises are true. He who presents the argument bears the burden. Thus, theodicy and skeptical theism overachieve, overexert, throw a punch where they merely need to catch one. A far simpler response is requesting evidence: Ask what reason there is for accepting the premises.
Now, I can see what reason there is for premise 4. At least, I can see how the atheist will go about building his case. He'll consider the most popular theodicies, and argue they do not convince. Thus, to ask after the support for premise 4 really is to get involved with the project of theodicy.
However, things are different with premise 5. What support is there for this claim? Be clear: The skeptical theist argues premise 5 is false; I'm just asking why we should think it’s true. And I'm aware of no presentation of the argument from evil where this premise actually gets supported. Simply on reflection, it seems no more plausible than its denial. It seems at least as likely that even if we cannot think of what justifying reasons God may have for allowing evil, it may well be that He has them anyways. Thus, until we’re given some reason for premise 5, the argument from evil has little force, and we need not offer anything more intricate than this by way of response.
Some complain that this response is rather under-achieving, lazy even. But it isn’t lazy to ask others to bear their own burdens of proof. As for under-achieving, I grant that someone who is intellectually curious, who hungers for truth, who swims in the deep end, will want to go on and explore theodicies, will want to articulate what God’s reasons might be. That is well and good. But while this activity might be worthwhile for other reasons or admirable in its own right, it isn’t necessary for neutralizing the argument from evil.
Further Reading
