What is the Problem of Evil?

The problem of evil is the problem of reconciling belief in a good and powerful God with a sincere recognition of the evil and suffering that exists in our world.

This problem is often expressed as an ‘inconsistent triad’: three propositions (i.e., a ‘triad’) that appear to be incapable of all being true at the same time (i.e., are logically ‘inconsistent’).

God is good; God is powerful; evil exists.

It seems, at least at first glance, that if either two of these propositions are true then the third must be false. If God is good and powerful, then why would God let bad things happen to good people or otherwise innocent creatures?

Given that we recognise the occurrence of many injustices and varied bad things, it must be either that God wants to prevent these things from happening but is not able to, or else is able to prevent bad things happening but chooses not to, or is both unable and unwilling, which is a state so low that it hardly qualifies as divine; so either God is not powerful or God is not good or God is non-existent. Or else we are wrong when we recognise the bad things in the world, all the evil and suffering, as something that a good and powerful thing would prevent, if they could.

The Good Doctor

Consult your down-to-earth intuition: we tend to think that if someone is a good person then they would do what they can to stop something bad from happening.

Imagine a doctor has the medicine needed to treat a sick and suffering child. Imagine the child was bitten by a snake and all that’s needed is the anti-venom, or the child has a simple infection that would be easily cured by a dose of antibiotics. All the doctor needs to do is administer the medicine and the child will get better. There is nothing preventing them from doing this: they have the medicine, they know the child is sick, no obvious harm will come from saving the child, and the child is in their care.

Now imagine that the doctor does not administer the medicine: the child continues to be sick, suffering greatly, and then dies. The parents of the child implore the doctor to administer the medicine, but the doctor steadfastly ignores them and allows the child to die. No reason or justification is offered by the doctor for their behaviour. As far as we can tell, there is no reason for the doctor not to administer the medicine. And yet they don’t. What would the parents say? What would you think of such a doctor? Would you call them a good doctor?

In this example, to say that the doctor is ‘good’ presents an intuitive paradox: if the doctor really were good, then why wouldn’t they administer the medicine to save the dying child? We want an answer; the parents want an answer; they want to understand why their child was allowed to die. They are owed an explanation. The doctor is good, the doctor had the medicine, and yet the medicine was not administered and the child died. Why was this allowed to happen? Why did they look on yet would not take their part? Did the doctor have any reason to behave as they did? Could any reason be good enough?

The Good Baker

You can construct structurally-similar examples for almost anything that we call ‘good’. This doesn’t even need to be ‘goodness’ in a distinctively moral sense.

Imagine a good baker of bread. The baker is good; the baker has all the resources necessary for the baking of good bread; and yet they repeatedly churn out lousy loaf after lousy loaf. What’s going on here? Why does an apparently ‘good’ baker seem to be incapable of baking a decent loaf? We want an explanation.

The most intuitive explanation is that one of our propositions must be wrong. It turns out that, contrary to our belief, the baker did not have all the resources necessary for the baking of good bread, or perhaps they simply weren’t such a good baker after all. It’s even possible that we, as it turns out, are not reliable judges of good bread. They are making ‘good’ bread, we just don’t like it.

The Good Tool

We can even construct structurally-similar examples where, not only is the ‘goodness’ in question not distinctively moral, the thing it is applied to could not be considered a bearer of moral attributes.

Imagine a good tool, like a saw. If we say the saw is good, and the wood is ordinary, and yet the saw cannot cut the wood, then we are presented with a paradox. If the saw cannot cut the wood, then we must suppose that either the wood must be unusual in some way, or else the saw must not be a very good saw after all. A good saw can cut ordinary wood: that is what we mean by a ‘good’ saw.

The Problem of Evil

The problem of evil is structurally similar to these examples.

If God is good, then God would, presumably, do what He can to prevent or alleviate evil and suffering; like a good doctor heals patients when they can and a good baker bakes good bread and a good saw can cut ordinary wood.

If God is powerful, then God, presumably, has the power to prevent or alleviate evil and suffering; like a doctor having the necessary medicine to hand or a baker having everything they need to make bread or a saw only being tested on ordinary wood.

And yet apparently preventable evil and suffering continues to exist, and to a degree of intensity that seems quite capable of being alleviated. What’s going on here? Why doesn’t God prevent or alleviate the intense evil and suffering in the world? Just like the cases of the good doctor or baker or saw, we want an explanation. We want to make sense of the apparent contradiction.

This is the problem of evil.

Anti-Theodicy, Atheism, God, Philosophy of Religion, Religion, The Problem of Evil, Theism, Theodicy