The Problem of Evil

1. The Problem of Evil

2. Our Question • Our question is: Does God Exist? • Theism: God exists. • Atheism: God does not exist. • Agnosticism: “I don’t know.” • Weak: I happen not to know. Maybe someone else does. • Strong: No one knows (despite what they might think). • Super-Strong: It is impossible for anyone to know.

3. We Need Ground Rules • To clarify the question: What sort of thing is God supposed to be? • Another way of putting it: • What would the world have to be like in order to contain God? • (Compare: What would the world have to be like in order to contain Pegasus?) • This is suppose to help lay ground rules for the debate: we should try to give an answer that both atheists and theists can agree on.

4. What Sort of Thing is God? God is supposed to be: • Powerful (Omnipotent, Almighty): God can do anything that can be done; • Knowledgeable (Omniscient): God can know anything that can be known; and • Good (Omnibenevolent): God loves and cares about all his creatures. Set aside: Whether, additionally, if God exists, he can do things that cannot be done; or whether God can know things that cannot be known. (Even Theists break their heads on how God could be this powerful or knowledgeable.) So: Theists only assert the existence of a being able to do anything that can be done. (Similarly for knowledge.)

5. God is a Person • Conclusion from our reflections: If God exists, he can do things, he knows things, and there are things that he cares about. • We call individuals who are agents, knowers, and carers:persons. • So, both atheists and theists agree: if God exists, he is a person.

6. Mere Monotheism • Some other stuff commonly attributed to God: the creator of the world, the creator of humankind, the inspiration and/or source for certain religious texts, the source of the moral law, the judge of human beings, etc. • Most of this other stuff is not shared commonly among the monotheistic religions, so we will ignore it. • We are asking about what you might call… • mere monotheism: the existence of a person who is almighty, all-knowing, and all-good. • This approach attempts to find a lowest common denominator among different monotheistic religious traditions. • Our approach neglects the very real differences among different monotheistic religious traditions. If you want to understand those, you should take a course from someone who knows something about them.

7. Remarks on What Needs to be Shown • This notion of God is not entirely bloodless. • Not just anything will count as God: theists need to show that a certain kind of person exists. • Trivially, perhaps, showing that there is a paperweight will not suffice. • Less trivially, showing that there was a Big Bang does not show that God exists: the Big Bang is not a person. (In particular, the Big Bang does not know things or have concerns.) • Showing that a certain idea exists does not show that God exists. An idea is not a person. (The atheist knows very well that religious people have an idea of God. What the atheist denies is that corresponding to this idea is a perfect person.)

8. The Problem of Evil is an Atheistic Argument • We are now going to look at one atheistic argument: an argument that God does not exist. • The argument is often called the problem of evil. • The argument is that this is only a problem for theism: you can avoid the problem by becoming an atheist.

9. There is Evil in this world (or at least bad) • The problem of evil revolves around the claim that there is evil in this world. • This seems a truism: there is cruelty, jealousy, pain, depression, torture, injustice, disease, natural calamity of all sorts, etc., etc., ad nauseum. • Note: many think that the word “evil” is endowed with supernatural connotations. • For instance, some think that calling something evil requires the existence of some malevolent intelligence (i.e. the devil) whose purposes it abets. • (Note: you can believe that God exists without believing that the devil exists.) • Even if you think this is true, and you deny the existence of the devil, you can still get a problem going for theism if you are willing to allow that those things in the list above are bad. • “The problem of bad” has its drawbacks as a label for this unit, so I’ll just keep using the old terminology.

10. Deep Background:Two Kinds of Evil • Some of the bad things in the world come about as the result of human actions. • Some of the bad things in the world are the result of natural forces. • dist: Natural Evil Artificial Evil What is it? Evil not caused by human actions Evil caused by human actions • hurricanes • epidemics • tsunamis • earthquakes • cutting in line (injustice) • Making fun of your aunt for her weird dye-job (cruelty) • stealing a nickel from your Mom for candy (theft) Examples

11. Complicating the Distinction I:Natural Evil and Human Action • It is not obvious how bright a line can be drawn between natural and artificial evil. • Note: If there are no human beings (and perhaps other animals) involved, then natural disasters may not be evil at all. • Examples: • paleozoic volcanic eruptions • that huge storm on Jupiter

12. Complicating the Distinction I:Natural Evil and Human Action (cont.) • Apparent Lesson: There is no natural evil that doesn’t result in some sort of suffering for someone. • Homework: Is this true? Come up with a case of natural evil that involves no suffering for anyone. • An upshot: some natural evils are made worse by human action. • Examples: • building a city below the level of an adjoining lake • living at the base of a volcano • raising chickens or other livestock in great numbers • So there is often a component of human error, wrong, willfulness, pride, etc., in natural evils.

13. Complicating the Distinction II:Artificial Evil and Nature • Artificial evil almost always requires the cooperation of nature. • (Possible purely artificial evils include, perhaps, “murder in your heart”: morally bad thoughts or feelings that do not get expressed in bodily action. But ordinary, run-of-the-mill artificial evil requires cooperation from nature.) • Examples: • “Hotel Rwanda” • the villain’s gun • The effectiveness of ordinary human action typically requires that the natural causal laws operate in the right (or wrong!) way. • Bad actions are no different.

14. Summary of the complications • Some natural evils are bad (or made worse) because of human action. • Almost any artificial evil is bad because of the operation of natural laws. • Some cases are hard to classify. Examples: • global warming • the Dust Bowl • using bioweapons

15. Existence of God, Existence of Evil • Many have held that the existence of evil poses a problem for theism. • Incompatibilism: If God exists, then bad things do not happen. • Now, there are two questions on the table: • Is there evil? and • Does God exist? • This gives us (technically) four positions: Do bad things happen? Does God exist? Compatibilist Theism Yes Yes X Implausible! These are the only positions we will be considering Yes No Polyanna Theism Incompatibilist Atheism X No Yes Implausible! Polyanna Atheism X X No No

16. The Significance of Incompatibilism • Here’s something that it is very implausible to deny: bad things happen. • (Just because it is implausible to deny this, doesn’t mean that no one ever has. Some philosophers (plausibly, Augustine) have claimed that evil “is not fully real.”) • For the purposes of this discussion, I am just going to take for granted that there is evil. • This assumption implies: • If Incompatibilism is true, then there is no God. • The Problem of Evil: How can bad things happen, if there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving person?

17. The Atheist Argument from Evil We can generate an argument for atheism, if we can establish Incompatibilism: • Incompatibilism: If God exists, then bad things do not happen. • Our Assumption: Bad things happen (C) Atheism: God does not exist. But why think Incompatibilism is true?

18. The Antidote Argument for Incompatibilism “God is the antidote to evil” • The Antidote Principle: If God exists, then: • He knows when bad things are going to happen; • He is powerful enough to prevent bad things from happening; and • He wants bad things not to happen. • The Bystander Limitations: If a person P does not prevent something from happening, then either: • She didn’t know it would happen; • She wasn’t powerful enough to prevent it; or • She didn’t want it not to happen. “There are limits on what you’ll fail to prevent.” (C) Incompatibilism: If God exists, then bad things do not happen.

19. Why think the Antidote Principle is true? The antidote principle seems to follow from our specification of what God is supposed to be like. • Omniscience: God, if He exists, knows everything that can be known; so (if He exists) He knows when bad things are going to happen. • Omnipotence: God, if He exists, can do anything that can be done; so (if He exists) He can prevent bad things from happening. • Goodness: God, if He exists, loves all of His creatures; so (if He exists) He wants bad things not to happen to them. The Antidote Principle is supposed to summarize these three points.

20. The Antidote Argument for Incompatibilism • The Antidote Principle: If God exists, then: • He knows when bad things are going to happen; • He is powerful enough to prevent bad things from happening; and • He wants bad things not to happen. • The Bystander Limitations: If a person P does not prevent something from happening, then either: • She didn’t know it would happen; • She wasn’t powerful enough to prevent it; or • She didn’t want it not to happen. Omniscient Omnipotent All-loving (C) Incompatibilism: If God exists, then bad things do not happen.

21. Why Think the Bystander Limitations are true? • The bystander limitations are motivated by a consideration of cases in which someone allows something to happen. • The Bystander Limitations admit only three excuses: ignorance, helplessness, and indifference. • Ignorant bystanders: • Sleeping through a burglary • Encyclopedia Brown • Helpless bystanders: • Cannonballs • Coyote • Indifferent bystanders: • You let your mother give your child a cookie • Convenient deafness in a teacher How could you fail to prevent that from happening? I didn’t know I couldn’t do anything I didn’t care

22. The Antidote Argument for Incompatibilism • The Antidote Principle: If God exists, then: • He knows when bad things are going to happen; • He is powerful enough to prevent bad things from happening; and • He wants bad things not to happen. • The Bystander Limitations: If a person P fails to prevent something from happening, then either: • She didn’t know it would happen; • She wasn’t powerful enough to prevent it; or • She didn’t want it not to happen. Ignorance Impotence Indifference (C) Incompatibilism: If God exists, then bad things do not happen.

23. Leibniz Gottfried Leibniz (1646 – 1716) Leibniz was a mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. Leibniz is a compatibilist theist.

24. This is the best of all possible worlds Leibniz argues: this world is the best of all possible worlds. • Whoever does not choose the best among several possible alternatives is lacking in power, in knowledge, or in goodness. • God is not lacking in power, knowledge or goodness. • God chose to create this world out of all of the possible worlds he could have created. (C) This world is the best out of all possible worlds.

25. Leibniz’s Argument seems a lot like the Antidote Argument Reminds me of… • Whoever does not choose the best among several possible alternatives is lacking in power, in knowledge, or in goodness. • God is not lacking in power, knowledge or goodness. • God chose to create this world out of all of the possible worlds he could have created. … the Bystander Limitations … the Antidote Principle (C) This world is the best out of all possible worlds.

26. Leibniz is not (quite) a Pollyanna • Leibniz’s argument looks a lot like the Antidote Argument for Incompatibilism. • But Leibniz is not an incompatibilist. He’s a compatibilist. • Leibniz is not a Pollyanna who denies that bad things happen. • He sounds like one sometimes. (Voltaire’s Candide is an extended satire of Leibniz’s Pollyanna-ish tendencies.) • It’s really hard to believe that this world is the best that God could have done. • Leibniz nevertheless admits that bad things do happen.

27. Leibniz: Bad Things Happen “[T]he best plan is not always that which seeks to avoid evil, since it may happen that the evil is accompanied by a greater good. For example, a general of an army will prefer a great victory with a slight wound to a condition without wound and without victory.” (p. 92, col. 1) • Leibniz claims: I may allow something bad to happen if I think that it is necessary to secure a greater good. • I will tolerate “necessary evils.” • Examples: • the wound is necessary for the victory • flu shots • high criminal burden of proof • Leibniz’s Thesis: Each bad thing that happens in this world is necessary to secure a greater good.

28. How does this help with the Antidote Argument? • Leibniz is a compatibilist, so he must think there is some flaw in the Antidote Argument for Incompatibilism. • How does the idea of a necessary evil help with the Antidote Argument? • Leibniz obviously agrees with the Antidote Principle: God does have the knowledge, power, and desire to prevent evil. • Notice that, in all of our cases of a necessary evil, we seem to have a counter-example to the Bystander Limitations: • The general allows the wound to happen, even though he knows it will happen, he could prevent it, and wants it not to happen. • I allow the prick to happen, even though, etc. • We allow the guilty to go free, even though, etc.

29. The Bystander Limitations: If a person P does not prevent something from happening, then either: She didn’t know it would happen; She wasn’t powerful enough to prevent it; or She didn’t want it not to happen; OR Allowing it is necessary for her to secure some greater good. Leibniz holds that Bystander Limitations is simply false. There is a missing condition: we need to allow for necessary evils. Once you add this condition, Incompatibilism no longer follows. Bystander Limitations is False Greater than what? Greater than the badness of the evil avoided.

30. The New Antidote Argument • The Antidote Principle: If God exists, then: • He knows when bad things are going to happen; • He is powerful enough to prevent bad things from happening; and • He wants bad things not to happen. • The Bystander Limitations: If a person P does not prevent something from happening, then either: • She didn’t know it would happen; • She wasn’t powerful enough to prevent it; or • She didn’t want it not to happen. • Allowing it is necessary for her to secure some greater good. Here’s the old Antidote Argument: Here’s the new Bystander Limitations: The new argument gets a new conclusion: (C) Incompatibilism: If God exists, then bad things do not happen. (C) “Necessary Evil” Compatibilism: If God exists, then bad things do not happen, unless allowing them to happen is required in order to secure a greater good.

31. Leibniz’s Thesis, Amplified • Leibniz’s Thesis: Each bad thing that happens in this world is necessary to secure a greater good. • Notice that this commits Leibniz to idea that every single instance of evil is justified because it has wonderful effects. • Theodicy: (literally “justification of God”): a theodicy is an argument that the existence of evil is justified. • Leibniz’s claim suggests a strategy for theodicy: for any given evil, show that it is necessary to achieve a greater good. • HOMEWORK: Unnecessary Evil: Describe an actual situation in which: • something bad happens; but • that bad event is NOT necessary to achieve a greater good.

32. How could evil be required to secure a greater good? • Ideas? • The Free Will Theodicy: a world in which some crabbiness, cruelty, etc., is allowed, but in which some people choose goodness, kindness, sweetness and light is better than any world without crabbiness, cruelty, etc., but in which God forces his creatures to goodness, kindness, sweetness, and light. • The Appreciation Theodicy: a world in which some misery is allowed, but in which people appreciate what contentment they may find is better than any world full of spoiled but contented ingrates. • Others? (A student once suggested: Test of Faith)

33. Compatibilism, Weak and Strong • Notice that a theist has to establish the compatibility of God’s existence with the occurrence of all the bad things that actually happen. • This is more difficult than just showing that God’s existence is compatible with the occurrence bad things in general. • Weak Compatibilism: God’s existence is compatible in principle with the occurrence of some bad things. • Strong Compatibilism: God’s existence is compatible with the occurrence of all the bad things that there actually are. • The Strong Compatibilist must show, e.g., that God’s existence is compatible with the breeding habits of Ichneumonidae wasps. "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."(Charles Darwin, Letter to American botanist Asa Gray, source: wikipedia entry for “Ichneumon”) source: http://iris.biosci.ohio-state.edu/catalogs/ichneumonids/

34. Objections from Actual Evil • What I am going to do now is offer three objections to Leibniz’s theodicies. • Each of these three objections accepts weak compatibilism: the existence of God is consistent in principle with some bad things happening. • But these objections start from the idea that there are particular instances of evil that seem hard for a theist to handle. • In effect, each objection poses a challenge to the theist: “account for this kind of evil”. • Our three objections are objections to different parts of Leibniz’s claim.

35. Each and every bad thing? Leibniz’s Thesis: Each bad thing that happens in this world is necessary to secure a greater good. • Leibniz’s theodicies require that every actual instance of evil secures some greater good. • The problem is that there are some bad things that happen that seem to result in no greater good – they’re totally pointless. • We need to make sure that none of the good effects required by our theodicies applies. • Free will cannot be involved – so we appeal to natural evil. • Appreciation cannot be involved – so we appeal to evils that no one ever learned anything from. • Examples: • certain birth defects • 100% fatal prehistoric natural disasters • You might call this the problem of pointless suffering.

36. Each and every bad thing? Leibniz’s Thesis: Each bad thing that happens in this world is necessary to secure a greater good. • The theodicy must justify: • The existence of the suffering; and • The extent of the suffering. • So, there are really two related objections here: • The suffering is pointless: the existence of these evils are not justified by good consequences; and • God seems to be laying it on a bit thick: The extent of these evils does not seem required to secure the benefits. There seems to be no need for the suffering to have lasted so long, and been so severe.

37. Is all that evil really necessary? Leibniz’s Thesis: Each bad thing that happens in this world is necessary to secure a greater good. • Who makes the rules around here, anyway? • It seems that the laws which require trading an evil for a greater good are laws that God can contravene (if He exists). • For example: • The general can’t secure a victory without a wound, but God can; • I can’t give someone an immunity to the flu without some discomfort, but God can. • Why can’t God secure the benefits without the pain? • Let’s see how this goes for both of the theodicies we are exploring.

38. Is all that evil really necessary? (vs. the Free Will Theodicy) Leibniz’s Thesis: Each bad thing that happens in this world is necessary to secure a greater good. • Free Will: • the benefits of free will are secured by the time the agent executes her decision. • the misery has yet to be caused – that requires cooperation from nature. • a minor miracle could save the benefits and prevent the evil. Cause Misery Action • A convenient misfire would have come in handy… • Or a good, stiff cross-breeze.

39. Is all that evil really necessary? (vs. the Appreciation Theodicy) Leibniz’s Thesis: Each bad thing that happens in this world is necessary to secure a greater good. • Appreciation Theodicy: • If God exists, it seems to be within his power to make us appreciate how good we have it without seeing (or experiencing) misery. • How about movies, or other fake misery, instead of real misery? Gee Willikers, am I a lucky ducky! Misery Causes Appreciation

40. For the greater good? Whose good? Leibniz’s Thesis: Each bad thing that happens in this world is necessary to secure a greater good. • The idea here is: some people bear the costs of the evil, and others get to reap the benefits. • Free Will Theodicy: The perpetrator (“the decider”) enjoys the benefits of free will, but the victim bears the costs. • Appreciation Theodicy: The sufferer bears the costs of, well, suffering, but us lucky folks get the benefits of appreciating our luck. • But this just seems to be unfair – it’s not the sort of thing you do to those you love.

41. On Adams • Adams does not endorse “Necessary Evil” Compatibilism. • “Necessary Evil” Compatibilism: If God exists, then bad things do not happen, unless allowing them to happen is required in order to secure a greater good. • Adams: This world is NOT the best of all possible worlds. • Since he rejects NE Compatibilism, Adams must identify some flaw in the NEW Antidote Argument given by Leibniz.

42. The New Antidote Argument • The Antidote Principle: If God exists, then: • He knows when bad things are going to happen; • He is powerful enough to prevent bad things from happening; and • He wants bad things not to happen. • The Bystander Limitations: If a person P does not prevent something from happening, then either: • She didn’t know it would happen; • She wasn’t powerful enough to prevent it; or • She didn’t want it not to happen. • Allowing it is necessary for her to secure some greater good. (C) “Necessary Evil” Compatibilism: If God exists, then bad things do not happen, unless allowing them to happen is required in order to secure a greater good.

43. Adams vs. the Antidote Principle • Adams seems to reject the Antidote Principle, the first premise of the argument. • Adams: God does not generally mind if bad things happen. • What’s left of the claim that God is perfectly good? • God’s goodness, according to Adams, requires only that • he never be unkind to any of His creatures, • never wrong one of his creatures, and • never act in a way that reveals a flaw in His character. • Being good (for us as well as for God) does not require that you prevent every bad thing you could prevent, even when it’s not a necessary evil. • Challenge: Can you think of a situation in which someone reveals a flaw in her character without acting wrongly?

44. The Happiness Principle • People suffer. We are not as happy as we might otherwise have been. Does it follow that there is no God? The Happiness Principle says, “yes!” • The Happiness Principle: God would be unkind, act wrongly, or reveal a flaw in his character if he created something that is less happy that it otherwise might have been. • Terminology: • Someone is maximally happy = she is as happy as it is possible for her to be. • An act A is ungodly = performing A is unkind, wrong, or reveals a flaw in one’s character. • The Happiness Principle 2.0: It would be ungodly of God to create someone who is not maximally happy. • Adams rejects the Happiness Principle. • What reasons can there be for doing so?

45. The Anti-Max Argument Warning: This is a simpler argument that the one Adams actually gives! • Anti-Max: If it is not ungodly to create any creature at all, then it is not ungodly to create a creature who is not maximally happy. • Creation is not ungodly: it is not ungodly to create a creature. (C) It is not ungodly to create a creature who is not maximally happy. There is also a direct argument for this conclusion from cases. I, for instance, am not as happy as it’s possible for me to be, but I certainly don’t think it would be ungodly for someone to have created me. This is just the negation of the Happiness Principle

46. Why believe that creation is not ungodly? • Why believe the second premise of the Anti-Max Argument? • George Bailey’s Principle: No creature is so miserable that it would have been better for that creature if it had never existed. • An upshot: creating a creature is doing that creature a favor. • Notice: doing someone a favor does not wrong them, is not unkind, and does not reveal a flaw in your character.

47. Why Think Anti-Max is True? Anti-Max: If it is not ungodly to create any creature at all, then it is not ungodly to create a creature who is not maximally happy. • Suppose that “potential happiness knows no bounds.” • This means: no matter how happy some creature is, it is possible that the creature have been even happier. • Compare: Could God create a creature who is “maximally tall” (i.e. as tall as it possibly could be)? • If potential happiness knows no bounds, God could not create a creature at all without creating a creature that is not maximally happy. • Anti-Max follows.

48. More on George Bailey’s Principle George Bailey’s Principle: No creature is so miserable that it would have been better for that creature if it had never existed. • Note: George Bailey’s Principle is independent of the anti-euthanasia claim we might call… • Terry Schiavo’s Principle: No creature’s life becomes so miserable that it would have been better for that creature if its life had been shorter. • (I have no opinion about whether Terry Schiavo would have endorsed Terry Schiavo’s Principle.) • How is George Bailey’s Principle motivated? • No Creature, No Goodness for that creature: if the creature had never existed, then there would have been no such thing as how good it was for that creature. • Hence, it would be false to say that it would have been better for the creature never to have existed.

49. Adams’s Optimistic View • Adams’s idea is this: • Each of us endures some measure of suffering. • But it’s worth it: our lives, on a whole, are worth living, even with the suffering. • In being given our lives, we have been given something that is, on balance, a blessing. • If God has done wrong in giving us lives like this, then whom has he wronged? Not any of us, who are lucky to have been created. • If God has been unkind to anyone, then to whom was he unkind? Not any of us, to whom he has given something that is, on the whole, valuable. • And where, exactly, has God revealed a flaw in His character? • Compare: your parents give you $300, even though they know that this may cause you some stress.