Notes in response to the Problem of Evil

 Pat flynn summary (and some additions) (https://chroniclesofstrength.substack.com/p/8-or-so-responses-to-the-problem)

:

1. The “We Know that God Exists” Approach.

2. The Total Evidence Approach.

1. The Weak Theodicy Approach–peter van: some potentially justifying reason for evil that “for all we know” might be true if God exists

2. The Strong Theodicy Approach. Eleonore stump: Bad stuff in the world are precisely what we would expect if theism is true

3. “The Stronger Theodicy Approach” by Trent dougherty: The distribution of evil could have fallen along many different dimensions (far more, far less, or even none) if naturalism were true. However, it seems to fall along the quite narrow dimensions that are conducive for goods considered to be of the highest value by most of us and especially by religious people. **Minh’s interpretation: on naturalism, evil could have been so bad that every innocent person burns painfully every second from conception to all of eternity. But this does not happen on theism; God allows the distribution of evil to be in a confined dimension. Nobody innocent will burn painfully every second from conception to all of eternity, though, on this earth, they may burn for hours or days. The distribution of evil is restricted on theism whereas the distribution of evil is non-restricted on atheism. Restrictedness rather than non-restricted provides evidence of theism over atheism.**

4. The Reformed Epistemology Approach. Plantinga: belief in god justified bc of reformed epistemology despite evil

5. The Skeptical Theist Approach. Even if theism were true, we don’t know (1) god’s plans, and (2) the amount and nature of evil. If (1) and (2) are true, then it decreases the strength of arguments from evil against god.

6. The God Is Not a Moral Agent Approach. Brian davies: god is not moral agent like us who are ordained to be good. But he is just good. His nature is goodness. PoE is non-starter because it presupposes god is ordained to be good when he is not.

7. [Dr. Alexander Pruss]: Modified Epistemic Moral Argument for God: we do know moral truths, but the best explanations of how we know moral truths presuppose the existence of God. After all, it is really hard to give a non-theistic account of how our [1] beliefs about rightness are responsive to the [2] facts about rightness. Thus, without God, there is no problem of evil to even begin with.

Why does God allows the unknown fawn in the jungle to arbitrarily suffer one more second of pain?

Firstly, Pat Flynn says, “some suffering in particular might be arbitrary, even if it is not arbitrary that there be suffering in general” (The Best Argument for God, 216). He quotes John Haldane saying, “Suppose it is logically the case that certain ranges of high benefit economies require patterns of innovation that mean that any given time a certain percentage of the population is unemployed or otherwise suffering” (quoted in Flynn’s 217). As an analogy to the real world suffering, God will that there be this high benefit like the economies have, and God does not will that particular people suffer but that it is something that does occur as a result of this greater good.

So the people chosen to suffer is arbitrary and the numer of people is arbitrary. To show this, Flynn says that God wants to make France fertile so he sends out 14,700,913 raindrops. As an analogy, God wants salvation fertility [i.e. people freely loving him] so God allows 700,992,213 instances of suffering (218).

Maybe it is arbitrary but that’s no problem. Van Inwagen tells us to imagine Russel who is on a ship and he could take people with him on the ship so they do not die. If not, they will die. If he does not take anyone on the ship, he has a 100% chance of surviving. But every one person he takes on the ship, he decreases the chance of his own survival by .1%. There is 1000 people there waiting to be taken to the ship. For example, if he takes only 1 person, he has a 99% chance of surviving on the ship. And if he takes 999 persons, he has a .1% chance of surviving on the ship.

Whatever Russell chooses, it is at least undesirable and, it is probably morally unacceptable: (1) take none of the refugees, (2) take only a handful of them, (3) leaven none of them behind, (4) and leave only a handful of them behind. He does not will that a particular person be left behind but that there will be a particular person who is left behind will be inevitable. God is in a similar moral situation. God would have to not save a fawn to preserve lawlike regularity, just like Russell would have to not save some people to preserve survival.

• Lawlike regularity with side effect of some fawns arbitrarily dying VERSUS irregularity in law with God intervening to save every fawn

OR, as John Haldane puts it

Imagine that it is the case that to have a high benefit economy, there is a certain percentage of the population that is unemployed or suffering. So then, very good economies involve temporary suffering. Thus, some particular individuals suffer as and when they do. But the structure of the good economy does not require that THESE individuals become unemployed or suffer.

Why did God create the beings of mosquitos, serpents, viruses, and diseases/natural disasters?

For example, “Objection 2. Further, it is said (Genesis 1:31): "God saw all things that He had made, and they were very good." But corporeal creatures are evil, since we find them harmful in many ways; as may be seen in serpents, in the sun's heat, and other things. Now a thing is called evil, in so far as it is harmful. Corporeal creatures, therefore, are not from God.”

Aquinas’s answer: 

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae > First Part > Question 65: “Corporeal creatures according to their nature are good, though this good is not universal, but partial and limited, the consequence of which is a certain opposition of contrary qualities, though each quality is good in itself. To those, however, who estimate things, not by the nature thereof, but by the good they themselves can derive therefrom, everything which is harmful to themselves seems simply evil. For they do not reflect that what is in some way injurious to one person, to another is beneficial, and that even to themselves the same thing may be evil in some respects, but good in others. And this could not be, if bodies were essentially evil and harmful.”

My answer:

• Satan did it, Adam and Eve did it, and/or evil deities of other religions did it

• OR: God allows the fawn to suffer because Jesus came to suffer with all creatures, including animals, and redeem all, including animals to heaven.

• OR: shown below for individual cases

1. Mosquitoes: [ans from reddit] They’re a good source of food for lots of different animals. Their larvae in particular are a source of food for all kinds of fish, frogs, aquatic reptiles etc. The adults serve as a good source of food for birds, bats, dragonflies and other species. Depending on the species some mosquitos serve an important role in the decomposition of organic matter in slow moving streams and bodies of water. Other mosquito species serve as natural predators in aquatic ecosystems much like damselfly and dragonfly larvae. They also play a certain smaller role in pollination like a lot of flying insects. They eat nectar, and in that process they tend to collect pollen on their bodies and spread it around.

2. Consider why God allows an earthquake, which is evil for the infant crushed under the ceiling that fell from the earthquake but is good for other things, such as influencing the flow of underground water, forming oases, and thus, increasing tree growth, oil and natural gas, the making of mineral resources available, landform development, monitoring the inside of Earth and producing seismic hazard assessments for designing earthquake-resistant structures. “where did the gorgeous Rocky Mountains in Banff and Jasper (and Colorado and Montana, I suppose) come from? Tectonic plate activity – i.e., earthquakes).”

3. Tsunami: the redistribution of nutrients in coastal regions, the creation of new habitats (for example, it can form new wetlands, estuaries, and tidal flats that support diverse wildlife), landscape changes (for example, tsunamis can promote the growth of mangroves, coral reefs, and other vital habitats that can better withstand future environmental stresses)

4. Hurricane: Rainfall gives a boost to wetlands and flushes out lagoons, removing waste and weeds and bacteria, providing a Global Heat Balance, Hurricane winds and waves move sediment from bays into marsh areas, revitalizing nutrient supplies. (2) Possible human usage of free will: what caused the tragedy in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? It seems unfair to me to ‘blame’ it on God for allowing the Hurricane. I can easily point the ‘finger of blame’ (though I think it’s unprofitable to do so in the first place) at human agents. (a) The people who built a gorgeous city below sea level, surrounded by an ocean on one side and a large lake on the other, with man-made dikes/levees as its only protection against the inevitable onslaught of water. (b) The people who failed to monitor the strength and efficacy of the dike/levee system.

5. Tornadoes: great pollination of flowers, gets rid of old vegetation, knocks down fruits to animals

6. Volcanoes: “The immediate outworking of a volcanic eruption can be extremely destructive – just ask residents of Pompeii. However, what is the longer-term result? The soil of Hawaii, after the rich volcanic deposits are broken down over time, is some of the richest soil in the world. Volcanic rock becomes extremely fruitful.”

7. Think of pollution, and global warming – are these the results of man’s actions? Most would say ‘yes’ without hesitation (including, I believe, yourself). While examples elude my mind this morning, think of countrysides which have been stripped bare of their trees and supporting vegetation. The next time major rains come, instead of the moisture being soaked up by trees, and the cascade of soil down the hillside being stopped by their root systems; there is nothing to impede the water and mud, and a major (and destructive) mudslide ensues. What causes the disaster? Is it not the direct result of the actions of human beings? So there are times at which disasters are directly or indirectly caused by us. Acid rain. Ozone depletion. Soil exhaustion. Desertification. Species extinctions. Etc., etc.

Objection: It seems troubling that God created these laws of nature governing natural disasters, such as tornadoes and hurricanes, that somehow lead to little benefits. Either God created these laws imperfectly or he did create them perfectly but purposefully set them up such that they lead to tornadoes and hurricanes which leads to unnecessary destruction.

Answer: 

Dogma ludwig Ott: 

God doesn’t per se desire physical evil but he wills physical evil, natural evil, and punitive evil per accidens, meaning as a means for the higher end of the physical order or the moral order.

Moral evil (AKA sin) is not willed per se nor accidens. The former means that a moral evil is not willed as its own end and the latter means that a moral evil is not willed as a means to an end. He simply allows moral evil. Through allowing moral evil, he shows his mercy in forgiving and his justice in punishing, as an old saying goes.

When scripture says God hardens hearts, it is a punishment where he withdraws grace. He is not the proper originator of sin.

The possibility of willing evil is an indicator of freedom but it suggests an imperfection. But God’s willing is of the essence of freedom, which is all perfect. Therefore, God cannot will evil like how created creatures can freely will evil.

In defense/theodicy:

-An action is morally good when it is consistent with the realization of the ends toward which our nature directs us, and morally bad when it frustrates the realization of these ends.

-virtues and vices concerns moral good and moral bad

-intellect (knowledge of truth including truth good things) inclined toward good and will (rational action) follow what intellect thinks is good

-God is not a being among beings. He has distributive justice in a qualified sense but in no way has commutative justice 

-the dilemma of either God being constraint by natural/physical laws or that must be able to command something that’s arbitrarily evil is a false dilemma. God’s natural is that he’s pure actuality, subsistent existent itself so his nature is why he doesn’t command arbitrarily evil things and why he isn’t confined to natural/physical laws. He’s the creator of these laws and physical laws, therefore, he’s not limited by it. For example, Think of an author, he can create a random laws in the story however he wants but to imply that the author is limited by the randomly created laws is wrong.

-Further God has distributive justice not commutative justice. Distributive justice is like a person of high authority giving what is due to each person. Commutative justice is like citizens dealing w each other in respecting property rights, keeping promises, and so on.

-doctrine of divine conservation/concurrency presupposes that God is good. God cannot created contradictory things like a square triangle, just like how he can’t command arbitrarily evil things because of his nature.

-infinite reward in heaven is better than any suffering do this time. It doesn’t break the Pauline Principle because the evil that one undergoes in this life is only proximate, not remote. And Pauline principle deals w causing evil, not allowing evil (allowance is what God is committed to). 

Obj: God would be responsible for evil even if he allows it bc it’s like a parent allowing a child to fall purposely 

Ans. If god exists, he wouldn’t observe and learn consequences, he would be all omniscient and he would know the ultimate consequences of evil (which will be good, given his very nature is good so he couldn’t allow arbitrary evils) as opposed to us only knowing the proximate consequence of evil living as mortal physical beings. Thus, he would allow evils insofar as they lead to good, the parent cannot allow that evil because they don’t know if it will lead to a good.

Objection: moral evils are enough for soul-building, disasters or natural evils are unecessary

Answer: true if we’re talking about soul-building. But we’re not. We’re defending God in the midst of natural evils because of societal progress it prompts: “I argue for natural evil because of the societal progress it prompts, rather than for the moral progress it prompts in the life of any one particular individual. If no one had ever been adversely affected by a disease, the medical field would not have ever developed advanced surgeries and medication. Or, if no one had ever died from an earthquake, cities would not have prioritized foundationally strong infrastructure, nor discovered methods of predicting such disasters.”

Or, as eleanor stump argues, natural evils [death, disasters, and diseases[ are present for man to realize man’s smallness, encourage man’s humility, how temporary goods of this world is, and to seek things above

Others:

Firstly, I think it’s helpful to understand what goodness and badness means. Badness is a privation, meaning that something has some lacking feature that is proper to it. Consider, for example, a chair which allows me to sit on it and another chair which doesn’t allow me to sit on it. It could be posited that the former is a good chair and the latter is a bad chair. So, goodness can be understood as the essence or nature of things. When a thing’s essence or nature is actualized more fully as it’s supposed to, it is good—when it’s not, it’s bad. So then, goodness is supposed to be understood as the presence of some feature proper to something. Badness can only exist if goodness exists because badness is the absence of some feature. That’s not to say, however, that badness doesn’t exist. Deafness is not merely a lacking feature proper to the ear, it is a real thing, but it doesn’t have any positive ontological status as does the goodness of a working ear. In short, goodness is actuality and badness is unrealized potentiality. That being said, if there exists God as the purely actual actualizer (as proven elsewhere in Thomas Aquinas’ arguments), he cannot actualize a privation, he only actualizes things with positive ontological statuses, such as goodness. Not only that, given the principle of proportionate causality—according to which God’s effects must be in him somehow—he must contain all goodness in the world in himself. Because he contains all goodness, he is all good. That doesn’t mean, however, that badness in the world is in him because recall that badness is a privation—a lacking of the good that’s proper to a thing. God can have no such lacking in him as the purely actual actualizer. Therefore, God is fully good.

• Privation would be like holes in socks, coldness, darkness, and cliffs [“Nothing in the wrong place can be just as real and just as important as something in the wrong place. If you inadvertently drive your car over a cliff, you have nothing to worry about; it is precisely the nothing that you will have to worry about” (Brian Davies, McCabe, 91).

Here’s another line of defense in consideration of pain. Without pain, our bad actions wouldn’t have negative consequences and thus a number of us wouldn’t feel motivated to develop great moral characters given that we could commit such evils. Certain moral growth comes through challenges which consist of pain. Therefore, pain is beneficial to our moral growth with certain qualifications.

Further, certain moral virtues couldn’t exist without certain evils. For example, forgiveness couldn’t manifest without evils like offense committed, patience couldn’t manifest if we got everything we wanted immediately, selflessness couldn’t manifest without corruption, compassion couldn’t manifest without pain, courage couldn’t manifest without danger, and generosity couldn’t manifest without poverty. Therefore, God permits certain evils so that some moral virtues could exist.

Moreover, it seems possible that God designed the world to make it so that there may be real doubt of his existence through evil. If he was blatantly known by everyone wherein denying his existence would be illogical, it would be like living under 24 hour surveillance where we’ll always act good even if we are actually not good. With God’s existence more hidden, we can develop moral growth more genuinely and if we do have bad fruits, it might show more clearly to us. = (1) The value of our trusting in him without being overwhelmed by the obviousness of his interventions. (2) The danger that we would end up counting on miracles, which would undermine our motivations for helping others. (3) The intrinsic value of the world proceeding according to its natural course.

Fifthly, given that there exists the attributes of omnipotence and omniscience in the unactualized actualizer (as proven in Aquinas’ writings and other Thomists’) God cannot be said to not be able to use evil for greater goods. Unless one was able to examine the full passage of time into the future, one cannot say that God can’t bring goodness out of evil. There’s no contract that God has to uphold which says, “God can permit evil only insofar as certain humans see the reasonings behind it.” No, he is not bound by space, time, and matter, nor does he need to show us finite humans his reasonings behind it immediately. So evils can have a ripple effect throughout time for ultimate goodness to be achieved without a single human understanding exactly how in the immediate life.

Moreover, given the existence of the Christian God, the beatific vision overshadows any evils in this present world. A century in earthly life would be considered a blink of an eye compared to eternity in heaven. This is encapsulated in what St. Paul says in Romans 8:18, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Therefore, unless the Christian God were proven to be false, one can arguably believe in the Christian God and find that temporary evils are insignificant compared to eternity in heaven.

Lastly, the greatest good that came out of evils is that God himself became incarnate and saved humanity from the pool of wretchedness they were swimming in through the passion of Jesus. So, against the grain of what so many people think, it is actually precisely because of evilness whereby God was able to show how deep his love was for humanity. The testament to these facts are found in the arguably true resurrection account of Jesus where he showed us that he can conquer evil.