The Problem of Evil - Term Paper Example

?The Problem of Evil God exists. But why does an omnipotent, an omniscient, and a supposedly omnibenevolent God allow evil? Does not the presence of evil actually contradict God’s nature? Or, can we maintain the view that God’s existence remains logically consistent despite the problem of evil? Surely the presence of evil in the forms of suffering, pain, and, of course, death, poses a great deal of criticism against the belief in the existence of God. This is the crux of theodicy. God is the inclusive symbol of man’s transcendental drive. The traditional arguments for God’s existence are expressions of man’s highest values. The “all-good,” the “all-powerful,” etc., are claims to justifying the creator who made the world of all possible worlds. Theodicy involves these traditional arguments and weighs these arguments against the scale of the problem of evil. G.W. Leibniz is a case in point. According to Leibniz, this world, no matter how imperfect, is actually the best of all possible worlds that God would have created in any way. More so, Leibniz’s optimistic theodicy does not see the existence of evil in the world as fundamentally counting against God’s existence. Therefore, evil, as it were, becomes a non-issue when seen from the purview of God’s grand plan of the universe. “Further, we realize that there is a perpetual and almost free progress of the whole universe in fulfillment of the universal beauty and perfection of the works of God, so that it is always advancing towards a greater development.” (1967, 421). Theodicy as the rational study of God necessarily has to come to grips with evil, where the question is about justifying God’s goodness in the presence of evil. Where does evil fit in God’s supposed good design? Is evil a necessary condition for the good to rise? If evil is part of the whole plan, does it not contradict the basic principle of not using an evil means to arrive at a good end? Or, are we in fact asking the wrong questions – when we forget that God and His ways are incomprehensible to and incomparable with our finite minds? To such pressing questions, atheism seems to be the most logical argument. But is it? What can theism hence say to such world-changing and life-altering issue? We cannot stress enough the importance of clarifying this issue, for at stake is the future of humanity. Does belief in God contribute to man’s pursuit of happiness, notwithstanding the other equally issue called evil? Or, is it something superfluous let alone erroneous? The presence of evil in the world is real, no doubt. But it has a purpose. The process of evolution forces us to admit to ourselves that we are not at the center of this cosmic process, and that what we need to do is to align ourselves to the ultimate end of the process. Teilhard de Chardin sees evil as part of the whole process of evolution from which man must learn to find his rightful place. De Chardin explains: “Statistically, at every degree of evolution, we find evil always and everywhere, forming and reforming implacably in us and around us.” (1975, 312). Similarly, an uncritical belief in an objectivist divine providence needs to give way to the reality of evil which God uses to teach man of his existence in the world. Divine providence is not magic. Evil is a privation of man’s supposed end of goodness. In the end, human affairs need to be addressed by man, not God. “The evil in the world is very great and we see little or no reliable evidence of a benevolent providence,” (Cupitt 2001, 106). Leave God alone! Atheism easily dismisses God’s existence on account of the reality of evil, as if to falsify altogether God’s existence because of the perceived presence of something that goes against God’s attributes. For atheism God’s existence is nothing but man’s projection of his desire to get the help of some superpower to take away the problem of evil which he cannot do. From a theistic perspective, the objections of atheism can be adequately addressed - not apologetically, but logically. “Evil in the world is not in fact incompatible with God’s goodness,” claims McCabe (2007, 79). Contrary to atheism’s objection, theism explains that evil is a consequence of man’s free will. Evil then is nothing but a privation of the good. Evil is not, as convention would have it, a positive reality. Evil exists only in relation to man’s failure to achieve the good to which his will is ultimately oriented. Freewill is man’s constitutive quality of being. By his freewill he causes his actions in the world. While God is the author of man and of his freedom, the consequences of man’s actions cannot be attributed to God. For Aquinas, “God is not the cause of evil even though by creating human beings with freedom he permitted the possibility of it,” (Stumpf and Fieser 2005, 175). Aquinas’ theodicy in explaining the consistency of God’s goodness has become the paradigm of consequent Christian theodicies. Alvin Plantinga’s celebrated “freewill defense” is one illustrious case. Basically, Plantinga argues when God created men with freewill, it was to really to make them free. For God to program them to do only what is right with their freedom is logically contrary to the essence of freedom. Freedom is self-determination! Meaning to say, God cannot intervene in man’s exercise of his freewill, for that would mean not being free at all. “Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely.” (1974, 166). Freewill is man’s essence and it points to man’s mystery. Certainly, the problem of evil, particularly moral evil, can be adequately resolved within this context of human freedom. Theism holds that using the defence for freewill, God cannot overpower man from the exercise of his God-given gift of self-determination. No matter how it appears illogical to see the suffering of the innocent who are not responsible for the evil they experience, there is more to the problem of evil than what appears. The theistic argument plainly says God allows evil to bring about a greater good! There is then the eschatological reason for evil. The significance of evil comes to light in the unfolding of the good. For example, John Hick’s argument about evil and soul-making precisely supports the eschatological claim. In the end, says Hick, what matters is we look to the future and strive to actualize our potential. That is what he refers to as “soul-making.” The reality of evil is something is paradoxically pointing to man’s search for meaning in this imperfect world. William James is more eloquent: “The evil facts which (the mind) refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth,” (1987, 152). In other words, evil is part of the whole scheme of things where in the end the good prevails. Without belaboring this theistic viewpoint, there is much to learn from what Ricoeur describes as man’s basic condition of fallibility to explain evil. “Man can be evil only in accordance with the lines of force and weakness of his functions and his destination.” (1965, 220). However, others feel that this position is untenable in clarifying and in arriving at an adequate solution to the problem of evil. (Tooley 2010). In summary, philosophers have attempted to bring this issue to some sufficient closure. Theistic arguments defend God’s goodness, while atheistic views disprove God’s supposed existence. Whether such theistic argument is acceptable to people is something else, for which debates about the existence of evil continue to rage. But what can we learn from this ongoing reflection? The problem of evil is an opportunity to rethink our notion of God as well as of human freedom. There is an adequate argument to suppose that the way we question the existence of evil vis-a-vis God’s goodness is fundamentally flawed. As one writer has shown, “quite apart from the problem of evil, the paradox of omnipotence has shown that God’s omnipotence must in any case be restricted in one way or another, that unqualified omnipotence cannot be ascribed to any being that continues through time.” (Mackie 2000, 591). God cannot be described using man’s ordinary language which is inevitably bound up to time. Time which engenders existence also limits existence. Time defines the boundaries of the historical world. God then is outside human language, because He is outside time! Aquinas would even say that the most adequate language about God is through the negative way. Meaning, we come to know something of God by those attributes that he is not. By the negative way we somehow approximate God’s infinite nature. So, when we say something about God like “God is love,” “God is just,” etc., we certainly mean more than those pious propositions. God transcends all human superlatives. God is beyond. In short, man’s traditional arguments for God’s existence need to be reviewed at the core. God is never a puerile creation. God is beyond man’s doing. God is God. Period. Evil in no way takes away God’s being. Theodicy as the rational interpretation of God must be seen more as a study of human freedom that results in real consequences of free actions. Yes, that is what evil is; it is a consequential reality. It is a result of man’s misuse of his freedom. Thus, the so-called problem of evil is perhaps after all a problem of perception. Could this be what an astute observer means, when he argues that “God could have given the humans in the world more sensitive cognitive faculties, faculties that could detect these lesser degrees of pain?” (Cullison 2011, 123). Man’s categories of existence cannot be applied to God, who is beyond man’s finite characterization. Thus, we simply admit that “God is. That is the primordial fact. . . . The final end and purpose of every human being is the intuitive knowledge of God’s being.” (Huxley 2003, 15). This implies rethinking current knowledge of God. Basically, the plurivocity of God indicates the inadequacy of any attempt to formulate any concepts to capture who God is. God is beyond our concepts. That is, God exceeds all human constructs of Him, lest he ceases to be God. Why is this so? This is so because the reality of God resists all efforts to achieve a totality. Man’s total knowledge of eclipses God. This implies that no dogma or theodicy has a monopoly of the name of God. God is not a bargaining chip that a religion dangles to win over individuals. In the words of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: “God, the name of the name, is beyond all names,” (1999, 73). Accordingly, atheism rightly understood is perhaps the necessary critical stance towards the complacency of treating God an object of thought. A-theism is no other than the radical putting into question of any dominant notion of God. God is more than our concepts of Him. Therefore, blaming God for the evil in the world is not exactly wise, let alone responsible. The reality of evil should be seen as an opportunity to strive further to attain to a level of man’s self-actualization. Leave God alone! This means respect for the otherness of God, no matter how it seems illogical when the world is confronted with the problem of evil. REFERENCES Cullison, A. (2011). “A Defense of the No-minimum Response to the Problem of Evil.” In Religious Studies: 121-123. Cupitt, D. (2001). Taking Leave of God. London: SCM Press. De Chardin, T. (1975). The Phenomenon of Man. Trans. Bernard Wall. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers. Huxley, A. (2003) Huxley and God: Essays on Religious Experience. Jacqueline Hazard Bridgeman. (Ed). New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. James, W. (1987). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human nature.” In William James: Writings (1902-1910). New York: The Library of America. Lacoue-Labarthe, P. (1999). Poetry as Experience. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Leibniz, G.W. (1967). “God and Evil: A Positive View.” In Knowledge and Value. Elmer Sprague and Paul. W. Taylor. (Ed). New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc. Mackie, J.L. (2000). “Evil shows that there is no God.” In Philosophy of Religion: A Guide and Anthology. Brian Davies. (Ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press. McCabe, H. (2007). Faith Within Reason. London: Continuum. Plantinga, A. (1974). The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ricoeur, P. (1965). Fallible Man: Philosophy of the Will. Trans. Charles Kelbey. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Stumpf, S. E. and J. Fieser. (2005). Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A History of Philosophy. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Tooley, M. (2010). “The Problem of Evil.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Read More