Evil, a Misunderstood Problem
A perspective on a philosophical question
In formal philosophy the problem of evil is a challenge to the arguments for the existence of God—a God of goodness who is omnipotent and omniscient and omnibenevolent (O3). Dovetailing with this is the use of it as an argument for atheism. There is a nuanced and subtle difference between these two since for philosophers it is not necessarily a denial of God, but for atheists it tends to be. For believers it is a very important challenge in both cases.
The argument I would like to explore is that this problem is fundamentally flawed because evil (anything that is bad) is misunderstood. Arguments from the standpoint of free will or God being outside the finite universe or anything that tries to apologize away evil are detached from understanding what evil actually is.
In no way should you interpret this to be a minimization of the awful, horrible, tragic things that happen in this world. The things humanity has endured and the grave, unthinkable horrors people have been victim to cannot be fathomed by any mind. History is filled with unrelenting suffering. This is all bad. Very, very bad. It is not desirable, and we must not in any way fail to see it for what it is.
I hate hearing about tragedies small and large. I even have a (bad?) tendency to invent stories that trigger bad feelings. If leaving a hotel I see a stuffed animal laying on the sidewalk near an empty parking space, I will worry that it is the favorite companion of a small child who dropped it. They are now hundred of miles down the road never to be reunited. I feel for the child’s pain—a pain I am simply imagining and hoping isn’t the case. Worse would be to witness the kid unknowingly dropping it out of the window as the car sped down the highway. For all I know the kid didn’t like it, but again my mind will go to sympathy for a painful loss.
And obviously worse would be a car wreck that took the child’s life or left the child an orphan. Hearing news about evil generally frustrates me greatly. “I would have been better off not knowing that!” is my first instinct. And in this world of too much news and too many shared stories that is probably fair. We get an unfair and unhealthy amount of bad news today. It leaves us jaded with a warped perspective of how much good is in the world and how good it really is today compared to the past. That is the downside of hearing (too much?) bad news. But is this reaction overdone? Is it even perhaps selfish to wish to shield oneself from it all making the shielding itself a bad (evil)?
In other words, is it good to hear of tragic news that is otherwise unrelated to you? Is it good to hear about pain even if you cannot relieve someone else’s pain by sharing it as the receiver of the news? Is it bad to share this news as one outsider to another where neither of you can do anything about it?
Obviously, if we can do something about it, if we make efforts to go and bear some of the pain or bring relief, then that has benefits to those who are suffering. In that case we might be gaining more from hearing the news and then taking action to help. If Jeff Bezos learns of a modest family who loses their home but not their lives to a fire and then gives them a much better home, they likely are better off and he likely gains more from the act (even if it is only personal satisfaction) than the small money cost to him.1 When the terms are greater such as the loss of a child, even a very generous financial gift will not overcome the loss.
Let’s go back to where we cannot do anything directly to help.
If there is a magical force (God or otherwise) that allows others to bear some of the pain easing the burden of those originally suffering, this would help indirectly. This would obviously include if praying for them brings relief.2 Nonbelievers may look at prayer as shallow sympathy. An empty gesture. And “I’ll pray for you” can be cold comfort for even believers when facing the raw presence of evil in the moment. The power of prayer to actually bring these benefits is easily doubted, not one I (or perhaps the Church) is ready to claim, and is obviously solely faith based. The idea that prayer necessarily brings tangible benefit in the form [“please make this better” = God makes it better] is an incomplete and potentially misguided understanding of prayer.
I am not denying that prayers can work to bring relief. I am simply showing that any attempt to find provable benefit to those originally suffering would fail. One cannot test for it or run the counterfactual. Therefore, this faith (hope) alone is not much to challenge the problem of evil and won’t affirmatively answer our question “Is it good to hear of or share bad news when there is no actionable ability to do anything about it?”.
So if there are no benefits, isn’t you learning of the tragedy too distant for you to help but close enough for you to now also feel pain just an increase in suffering therefore a net negative? Not necessarily in at least one small respect because learning of others suffering can better prepare you for future suffering. But beyond that small perhaps superficial benefit there is the larger benefit that it can be good to suffer. It can be good to learn about others’ hardships.
Compassion means to suffer with. Being moved to hurt as others hurt in sympathy with that hurt is itself a good. We grow spiritually. We get bigger hearts. If we look at the world simply on linear good-bad or happiness-unhappiness dimensions, then we can’t necessarily see the benefits of compassion. Life, the world, the universe is more complex than that. There are multiple dimensions to consider. Suffering and suffering with others is an inescapable and essential quality of life. And I argue it is a positive quality—a good, not a bad (evil). Rather than placing suffering along a linear dimension from desirable to undesirable, we should consider it as part of a continuum.
The problem of evil is presented as a strong challenge to belief in God. But to the faithful, this is not so daunting. We look upon the question with puzzlement as would a sports fan if asked why must there be a winner and loser. It is a necessary feature of the game. Winning and losing is good/bad in the moment, but it isn’t the essence of what matters. How we play and how we handle each outcome in the midst of a recurring series of games is what truly matters.
This limited analogy should be understood as such. This is not a condoning of evil. I am not dismissively saying, “Sorry about your dad, but, well, win some, lose some.” Still the sports analogy is important because it illustrates the essence of my argument of misunderstanding.
The experience of pain, the existence of evil, is not itself a virtue, but it is a call to action. The virtue comes from being the good in response to the bad and in defiance of evil.
What’s more, the good is not always pleasant. That is the child-like perspective of thinking simply and absolutely that good things are good and bad things are bad. Again, the world is more complicated than that. We do hard work to live a better life. A better life without the hard work would be great (and good), and striving for an easier path to a better life is worthwhile. But there is more to it than that. Achieving a better life (the good life) requires work (oftentimes hard work), and the hard work can be an ends in itself. The hard work can be the good life.
A house without need of repairs is ideal but not realistic. A house with minimal need for repairs is realistically worth striving for. Yet that aspiration does not mean that the need for repairs that will come are a proof of the foolishness or evil of the architects, engineers, and general crew who constructed it much less proof of their nonexistence. And the repairs themselves while burdensome carry their own opportunities for good work and improvement. To presuppose no repairs is to engage in fantastical thinking. The repairs exist because the house exists. Even in tragic loss where no repair is possible or meaningful since that which is lost (human life) is not repairable, we still are called upon for healing. And that call carries its own virtue—the tragedy isn’t virtuous, the response is.
Could an O3 God not make a house that was perfect with no need for repairs? He could in one sense if repairs are simply flaws. He could not in another sense if repairs are essential to a house being a house—without them it is something else. This is where the misunderstanding lies. A house without repairs is not a house just as the word “house” is not the same word if missing some of the letters.
Arguing that the existence of evil defeats the idea that there can be an O3 God fails because it is begging the question presuming that evil’s existence is contradictory to an O3 God and because it is nonsensical, an argument from impossible contradiction. Here is the formal argument that fails:
Premises:
P1: An O3 God could chose a world without evil
P2: An O3 God would chose a world without evil
P3: The world does have evil
Conclusion: Therefore, no O3 God who created the world exists.
Both failures (circular reasoning and nonsensical questioning) are due to misunderstanding evil. In the first case the misunderstanding is thinking evil is a contradiction so it presumes evil = no O3 God. That is the conclusion so it cannot be the argument. You can see this failure once restated:
Premises:
P1: An O3 God [does not allow for] evil
P2: An O3 God [does not allow for] evil
P3: The world does have evil
Conclusion: Therefore, no O3 God who created the world exists [because an O3 God does not allow for evil].
The argument rests on evil-must-imply-no-O3-God in order for evil to imply no-O3-God. This is circular and therefore invalid.3
In the second case the misunderstanding is thinking the world could not have evil. This is similar to the nonsensical argument against an O3 God that He could not make a stone so heavy He could not lift it. God cannot make 2+2=5; he cannot make a contradiction. God cannot make the world (a thing that inherently has evil) without making the world (again, a thing that inherently has evil). Asking if God can both make the world and not make the world is no argument.
Life is richer than just the ordinary, stereotypical, and superficial good—these two clips from Good Will Hunting come to mind. To suppose we can have the good without the bad, joy without pain, happiness without sorrow, is to dream of a world incomplete and impossible. Obviously, the good is easy to embrace. The difficulty comes in accepting the bad while not giving over to it. The faithful give over to God trusting that he is there suffering with us. We seek to do His good work striving against the bad in the world including embracing the suffering that comes from it. By sharing the burden our lives are made richer, fuller, and closer to God.
In economic terms his marginal cost from, say, a $500,000 gift given (he has a little less money) might be easily outweighed by the marginal benefit to him. Money is not his budget constraint. Also, this isn’t a violation of the broken window fallacy. I am not arguing that we are better off economically because of the fire resulting in a redistribution from someone (Bezos) who gets less benefit from the money than does the modest family much less that it results in some economic activity benefit. But I am alluding to the idea I’ll argue next that it opened an opportunity to gain (compassion) out of a financial loss.
It would also include a non-traditional (non-Christian or other formal religion) concept of the power of good thoughts—that being learned and known transcends physical limitations to bring relief. This is still a spiritual concept and simply prayer by another name.
Admittedly, I am only mostly sure of this challenge I am making of begging the question. Perhaps I should have left it out since I think the other facet of misunderstanding evil defeats the problem of evil argument by itself.