Problem of Evil
The question of how the existence of suffering and moral wrong can be reconciled with belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God.
The problem of evil is the question of how the existence of suffering and moral wrong can be reconciled with the traditional theistic conception of God as omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. The logical problem holds that the existence of evil is incompatible with such a God; the evidential problem holds that the amount and distribution of evil makes such a God unlikely.
Religious responses go under the general heading of theodicy — the attempt to justify God's permission of evil. Augustine developed the privation theory of evil and the free-will defense; Leibniz argued that this is the best of all possible worlds; Hick proposed a soul-making theodicy. Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion gives the classic statement of the problem from a skeptical perspective, and contemporary philosophy of religion continues to debate whether any theodicy is adequate.
Augustine's privation theory holds that evil is not a positive thing but a privation of the good — the lack of being or order in something that should have it. On this view, God is not the author of evil because evil has no positive existence to be authored. The free-will defense, developed extensively by Augustine and refined in the twentieth century by Alvin Plantinga, holds that significantly free creatures might bring moral evil into the world; God's permission of free will is itself a great good.
Leibniz's Theodicy (1710) introduced the term and gave the most ambitious early-modern theodicy: God, choosing among possible worlds with perfect knowledge and goodness, must have chosen the best. Voltaire's Candide (1759) and the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 gave Leibnizian optimism its most influential satirical demolition. Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) compresses the philosophical case against natural theology with characteristic precision. The contemporary debate has produced sophisticated free-will and skeptical-theist defenses, alongside the work of analytic atheists like J. L. Mackie and William Rowe who have refined the evidential argument.
How philosophers have framed problem of evil
| Philosopher | Position |
|---|---|
| Augustine of Hippo | Privation theory: evil is the absence of good, not a positive thing. |
| Gottfried Leibniz | Theodicy: God chose the best possible world from among possibles. |
| David Hume | The amount and distribution of evil makes traditional theism implausible. |
| Fyodor Dostoevsky | Ivan Karamazov's protest: no future harmony justifies the suffering of children. |
| Alvin Plantinga | Free-will defense: significantly free creatures bring moral evil; their freedom is a greater good. |
Representative quotes
-
Augustine of Hippo
-
“Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.”
XV, 22
-
-
Gottfried Leibniz
-
Attributed to Gottfried Leibniz:
“We live in the best of all possible worlds.”
-
-
David Hume
-
“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”
Part 4, Section 7
-
-
Fyodor Dostoevsky
-
“To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.”
Personal correspondence (1839), as quoted in Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971) by Konstantin Mochulski, as translated by Michael A. Minihan, p. 17
-
-
Alvin Plantinga
-
“To show that there are natural processes that produce religious belief does nothing, so far, to discredit it; perhaps God designed us in such a way that it is by virtue of those processes that we come to have knowledge of him.”
Warranted Christian Belief . 2000. p. 145. ISBN 9780195131925 .
-