So far, in my two previous posts, my faith epiphanies confirmed my previous perspectives on basic religious principles. This is the point of contention which really bothered and frustrated me. Why? Because this argument is so logical and rational, so easily defended, that I couldn't even really convince myself to ignore it. We were assigned a philosopher to defend for our class debate. Go figure, I was assigned J.L. Mackie, an atheist. HA! One thing's for sure... preparing and participating in the debate was interesting...
Problem: God is wholly good and yet evil exists.
Premise 1: Good is opposed to evil, in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can.
Premise 2: There are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do.
Therefore, a good omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely.
Therefore, it is irrational and incompatible for evil and a good omnipotent thing to exist simultaneously.
Therefore, because evil exists, God must not exist.
Take a minute to process that. Done? This argument is so straightforward, I couldn't come up with any legitimate, non-faith-related counterargument to this. Here, let's try, with my defenses in line with the thoughts of J.L. Mackie. These are real counterarguments that theists would use to justify the presence of evil in the world.
Counterargument: "We're only human. We're not supposed to know all the answers." Yes, I agree with that, personally, but to a philosopher in the middle of a debate, that sounds a lot like a cop-out, an indication of surrender. This one is too weak of an argument.
Counterargument: "Evil must exist in the world in order to bring about good." Doesn't that limit God's omnipotence? If He's capable of doing anything and everything, why can't he create good without creating evil? Also, this would only be justified IF and only IF there was just enough evil to balance out the amount of good, but that is not the case. There are some evils that are just evil; some even create even more evil (i.e. a large percentage of sexual assault victims go on to perpetuate the cycle).
Counterargument: "Evil is due to human free will." So basically, God created Man, then it's a free-for-all after that? Does this mean God has no control of His creation? Does that mean the creators of the atomic bomb are innocent of the slaughter in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why couldn't God create people who always choose between different degrees of good instead of having the possibility of choosing evil?
What do I think? I really don't know. This is the one argument I couldn't contend. This question has always been the one to leave me speechless. Why do bad things happen? Does this weaken my faith? I left that debate victorious yet broken. Why was it so easy for me to argue in defense of an atheist? That really bothered me and left me frustrated; I was shaken up. It's like I'm looking at a data set, and there's one point that deviates from the rest. Of the topics discussed in class, this was the only one I failed to truly gain a concrete opinion on. Do I have answers now? No, not really. The problem of evil is a sensitive subject that I'll need time to reflect upon. Maybe I'll revisit this topic sometime in the future. As of now, what I do recognize is my anxiety and frustration at being unable to reconcile the idea of a theistic God and the existence of the problem of evil.
Anne, I would have to agree that the problem of evil is the toughest problem to reconcile...since i managed to never take one philosophy class I won't argue it but....my Jungian exposure has lead me in the direction of taking the good with the bad, looking at and accepting the opposites in every category as our own task to try and reconcile. At this point even thinking that we have to consider God as all good seems ridiculous..and arrogant to me...especially when an infinite God can only be known to a small degree by our finite humanity.
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