Problem Of Evil Challenge

In early October, my girlfriend, Nicole, our downstairs neighbor, Suzanne, and I attended a debate between University of North Carolina Religious Studies Professor and bestselling author Bart Ehrman and conservative speaker cum erstwhile Christian apologist, Dinesh D'Souza, focusing on The Problem of Evil. This debate has raged for years (centuries) but I walked away with an idea that I think might be a debate killer on this issue,a philosophical silver bullet.

The Christian god is described as the omnipotent, or all-powerful, omniscient, or all-knowing, omni-benevolent, or all-good and all-loving creator of the universe and all that is within it, including the laws that govern it.

Additionally, most Christian denominations believe that god values free will.

As we can see from casual observation, there is evil, in the form of suffering, in the world.

Some of this suffering is in the form of "natural evil" such as natural disasters and disease. Some of the suffering is in the form of "moral evil," or bad things that we human beings do to one another.

The quandary that has plagued this view of god and which was the subject of the recent debate between Ehrman and D'Souza is summed up thusly: If god is all-loving and all-good then why does he allow evil to exist? If he permits its existence then can he really be described as all-good? If he can't stop it, then he can't be all-powerful. Ehrman and D'Souza debated well but never got to the heart of the issue.

On the issue of natural evil, if god could create any possible world, could he not have created one in which there was no natural evil or suffering but in which free will is preserved? Could he not have made a world without tsunamis and without AIDS and without drought and famine but within which humans could still make choices regarding moral evil?

Even if death is a necessity (which there is no reason to think that it would have to be for a god who can bring about any conceivable eventuality), it could occur instantly and painlessly for all. Even if he were to create a world devoid of natural evil, that does not mean that moral evil would necessarily cease to exist, so the absence of natural evil would not negate free will or the ability to choose to do moral evil. Even if there were no tornadoes or floods, you could still steal a candy bar from the store or covet your neighbor's wife.

However, this is not the main point of my argument. The misguided concept that moral evil is a necessary condition of existence is the crux of my argument.

First a little thought exercise.

1. Imagine if a person were to take a survey of 1000 people concerning their food preferences.

2. On this survey, the participants are asked to rate their preferences for a variety of different foods on a scale of 1 to 100. A score of 100 means that the participant could eat that food just about every day and that it is one of their favorites. A score of 1 means that the participant has a deep loathing for that food and would only eat it if they were facing certain starvation.

3. Imagine that out of the 1000 participants, 100 reported that that beets rated a 1, meaning that they would have to be near death to eat them.

4. Now, additionally imagine if the 100 participants who rated beets as a 1 were separated from the rest of the group and taken into a cafeteria and offered the choice of several different foods; pizza, tacos, hamburgers, tofu, hot dogs, chicken breast, grilled vegetables and, lastly, beets.

5. Not surprisingly, none of our participants would choose to eat the beets.

Did offering them these foods in any way deprive the participants of their free will? Were they not able to choose any of the foods offered? Limiting the pool of participants in the experiment in no way limited their ability to choose freely of the foods offered.

If god is omniscient, then he, by definition, is able to foresee what each of the persons that he choose to create will do after being created. It seems that without this ability, there would be no such thing as “prophesy,” for in order for god to predict the future through his chosen human mouthpieces (prophets), he would first have to have the ability to peer into the future.

By definition, an omni-powerful god would be able to create an infinite number of people. Out of this infinite set, there would be some who would rate a 1 on their natural predilection towards perpetuating moral evil. Out of an infinite number of potential humans, there would also be some who would choose to do what god wills and turn away from moral evil. If god lacked the ability to create (out of an infinite set of possibilities) any humans that would freely choose to follow his will, then, by definition, he lacks omnipotence.

You may now be seeing why I bothered with the imaginary food survey. Just as within our imaginary set of survey participants there were some who avoided beets. Out of an infinite set of potential people, there would be some number who would choose not to do things that are morally evil. Remember we are talking about an infinite set, completely boundless in number or in attributes. Within an infinite set, all conceivable possibilities and combinations of attributes would exist.

Think of our original pool of 1000 survey participants as our potential cafeteria visitors. Out of these, we chose only to invite those who we knew would avoid beets to come to the cafeteria to continue the experiment. With his omniscience, could not god only create the people that he knows will choose to avoid moral evil without impinging upon their free will? After all, the experimenter in the food survey did not interfere with the participants' ability to choose to eat beets in the cafeteria. He merely selected only those that he knew would avoid this choice of their own volition. By creating only those who would choose not to do moral evil, god could express his omni-benevolence by removing moral evil from the world while in no way interfering with free will. Since this is not the reality that we observe in the world, then it must be that there is some limit either to gods omni-benevolence or his omnipotence.

To some degree, if he exists, god must already make some choices about whom, out of an infinite number of potential creations, he chooses to create or not to create. If not, then there would be an infinite number of human beings. We know that the world population is around 6.7 billion...Although I was never great at math, I am pretty sure that this is a finite number. He must also choose which attributes to give people. I do not have wings, so does this mean that I am deprived of the free will to choose to fly without the aid of machinery?

So to sum it up, god must have made the choice to allow moral (as well as natural) evil to exist in the world or must have been unable to stop it.

While this is not proof that a god does not exist in some form, it certainly casts some serious doubts that an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent god who also values free will exists.

I tried to explain this concept to both Nicole, who is an armchair Christian, but knows very little about her purported faith, and to Suzanne, who is a reluctantly agnostic, lapsed Catholic who can't quite let go of her ties to religion. Neither of them could grasp the idea, so I ask you, Dear Reader, to let me know if there is some flaw in my logic.