Some More Thoughts on the Problem of Evil

I recently had a discussion with an atheist about the problem of evil and it was a very helpful discussion for me. I wanted to share some of the fruits of that discussion.


The first part of our discussion dealt with the incompatibility challenge between some of the Divine attributes and the existence of evil. The argument went something like this:


  1. God is said to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

  2. If God is not omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, then He does not exist.

  3. If God exists, given the above definition, then He would prevent all evil from obtaining if it were within His power to do so.

  4. God can prevent all evil since He is omnipotent.

  5. Yet, there is evil.

  6. So God does not exist.


This is the classic argument. I denied premise 3 as I do not think that God is a moral agent and so does not have a moral obligation to prevent any evil from obtaining. The fact that He is not a moral agent does not, however, entail that God can cause evil to obtain as evil in itself is a modality of non-being and so can never be willed directly. Even with this metaphysical restriction in place, premise 3 need not be granted as God can allow for evil to obtain as long as it is not willed directly, but is willed for the sake of some good. This kind of response, I think, does a lot to undermine all forms of the problem of evil, whether they be logical or Bayesian, as the only way that evil could count as evidence against the existence of God would be if there was an instance where evil was being willed or caused to exist, but this is impossible as long as privation theory is true (see here: https://theaspiringjesuit.blogspot.com/2021/12/some-general-thoughts-on-problem-of-evil.html). 


This response, however, still leaves a big question unanswered: even if God has no obligation to prevent evil, why does He permit it? This is a very important question and this is what took up most of the discussion with my friend. My answer was, in essence, that evils are a necessary possibility that God cannot prevent happening in changeable things. Let me explain.


As I explained in my previous post, anything that God creates apart from Himself must be finite (see here: https://theaspiringjesuit.blogspot.com/2022/03/whatever-god-wills-apart-from-himself.html). However, in order for a thing to be finite it must be limited, privated, in some way. Now, this does not entail that evils are necessary in order for finite things to be created since evils are a subset of privations: evils are privations that ought not to be there. An example of a privation that is not an evil would be the fact that humans lack wings; this is not an evil as it is not part of human nature to have wings, but it is still a privation since it is something that human beings lack. An example of an evil would be if a human being lacked two eyes; this would be an evil as it is part of being a human to have two eyes and so to not have two eyes would be a privation that not to obtain in human beings. All of this is to say that privations are necessary for the creation of finite things. 


Taking this idea a little further, if God wishes to create finite things which are changeable, which have potentialities, He must allow for the possibility of evils. The reason this is the case is because in beings with potentialities the being is, by definition, not purely actual and so can change through the actualization of these potentialities. However, this leaves open the possibility that these potentialities are not actualized by the creature; this is to say, this leaves open the possibility of evils obtaining as these potentialities are required for the full actualization of the creature, but given that these potentialities can remain potential, the creature can refrain from actualizing these potentialities, thereby ‘creating’ an evil. 


One might respond that God could simply ‘force,’ as it were, the creature to actualize these potentials. This response, however, would only be the case if God were the sufficient condition for the actualization of finite potentialities, but He is only a necessary condition as the creature is the sufficient condition for such actualization: God can’t actualize a finite potentiality if there is no finite creature in which the potentiality inheres. 


One might worry that allows for the possibility of evils always existing as God can’t ‘force’ creatures to actualize their potentialities. I don’t think this is so because God’s causality is infinite as He Himself is infinite. Beings apart from Himself, as explained in the previous post, are necessarily finite and so their fully actualized versions of themselves are also finite. Since God’s causality is infinite, and the creature which is being caused is finite, the creature will eventually reach its fully actualized state as the finite must be moved by the infinite. This, however, does not undermine my response as while God is only a necessary condition for the actualization of finite potential, the finite can only resist infinite causality finitely and so while God cannot force these potentialities to be actualized, the sufficient condition will eventually be met given God's infinite causality.


Comments

  1. Dominik KowalskiMarch 16, 2022 at 12:16 PM

    Admittedly I haven't worked on the problem of evil in quite a while, because actually God not being a moral agent in the univocal sense and him not directly willing the evil of and for any particular creature suffices to rebut the problem of evil. Of course, the follow-up question by your interlucor is fair and poses a puzzle. However by itself it no longer is sufficient to justify the rejection of theism or, at the very least, supernaturalism.

    I try to approach the problem on my own two ways, since I have sympathies and leanings towards positions some may find peculiar.

    1) I'm very sympathetic towards the position by Lewis and Almeida, namely the extreme modal realism. This needn't mean that at the current moment every world exists, but rather that the World W contains every actualia and possibilia that in the past, present and future will occur. Every metaphysical possibility open to God will be actual somewhere and God, in his Goodness knowing the value of being, necessarily emanates it. Then the question for why is there evil diffuses: Such a world is compatible with God and thus gets created since it's in the big block of all actualities and possibilities. And why do we suffer such evil? Because we just happen to live in such a world and there are infinitely many *comparable* (not identical) instances of *us* in worlds like or very much unlike ours. If there's no such thing as instances of individuals such that God doesn't know us before creation, then the question becomes superfluous anyway, because that then would just happen to be the world we live in.

    2) Let's conceive of the ladder of being. God at the very foundation is metaphysically incorruptible. Now when it comes to divine thoughts or angels as forms themselves (putting aside that I have problems making sense of that), we're likely in a territory where they aren't incorruptible *by themselves*, but rather God necessarily creates them as the One creates the Demiurge and these beings are necessarily incorruptible by their nature. They could logically cease to be, but they couldn't ever be different from the way they are, if that makes sense. If required I could explain in greater lengthlength, but I hope it's broadly clear what I'm trying to get at. The higher we get in terms of ontological levels, the more contingent and corruptible do the entities become. And so we just find us in such a world due to the nature we have, which is a nature that undergoes change. It might look like ridiculing the problem of evil, but if one understands why then for a Brian Davies the act of breathing that destroys the substance O2 to transform it into CO2 is an example for an evil *suffered*, the metaphysics of evil become clearer, in the same way you describe in your last few paragraphs, as the possibility to refrain from actuation. The more finite a being is, the more possible evil is there.

    Similar thoughts can be found in Lloyd Gersons draft "Why embodiment necessarily entails evil"

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