The Problem of Evil in Religion (And Why It’s Not Truly a Problem)
A persistent problem in theology and the philosophy of religion is that of Evil. How can the existence of evil be reconciled with the existence of an all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing (omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient) creator? A standard form of the logical argument of The Problem of Evil (taken from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) is as follows:
1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn’t have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn’t know when evil exists, or doesn’t have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.
In this form, if all 6 of the premises are true, then the conclusion (line 7) must follow.
There have been several refutations of this argument in the history of philosophy from theologians by such means as introducing the necessity of free-will, or by introducing the notion that we lack complete knowledge of the universe and thus the existence of evil may be morally permissible in light of some higher good that we do not understand. In addition, one may take issue with the conception of God as an anthropomorphized “king”, as opposed to Eastern conceptions of God such as the Tao of Taoism or Brahman of Hinduism. These arguments have varying degrees of success, and have been met with varying refutations from the other side. The “free-will defense” has been met with objections about “natural evils” such as the suffering inflicted by natural disasters and such events that are independent of human will. Changing the definition of God seems to be somewhat of a straw-man argument, as the issue at hand is typically centered upon that of the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of God. The “higher good” defenses seem to do the best as they do invalidate the logical contradiction of God and Evil co-existing — however, the argument seems to be a “cheap way out” in a sense, because it does nothing to show or increase any probability that God and Evil do in fact co-exist. In the same kind of way, an argument against the existence of the moon while you are sleeping is not bolstered by the fact that you can’t verify its existence while sleeping (though it is this very fact that allows for the logical possibility of a disappearing moon in the first place). Thus, this type of argument is somewhat unsatisfying from a philosophical perspective. However, I do not believe that changing the conception of God or changing/adding additional premises of “unknown good” or free-will are even necessary to defeat this argument.
I believe that the very conception of Good and Evil are at issue here, and the premises can be invalidated as written. Good and Evil in the traditional sense in the Western world have been taken to be mutually exclusive concepts — that is to say, they not only exist independently of each other, but the existence of one to a certain degree precludes the existence of the other to the same degree. This conception suggests that God should be able to “erase” all the Evil while keeping the all the Good. Instead, I argue that Good and Evil do not only co-exist, but necessarily imply each other. They are — in the Taoist, Zen, or even Jungian sense — “mutually interdependent”. That is to say, that they are two sides of the same coin, such that you cannot have one without the other, and an increase in Good would indeed imply a proportional increase in Evil and vice-versa.
If this is true, then it would render premises 2 and 4 invalid, as even an omnipotent God would be unable to do away with Evil without also eliminating Good (from a tautological standpoint), and even an all-loving God would be unwilling to do away with Evil, as he would be simultaneously eliminating all Good as well — necessarily throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
The idea that Good and Evil are separate concepts seems to stem in part from the idea that they are opposites, so that the presence of one negates the existence of the other. This idea in turn stems from a deep rooted, and I would argue foundational, Western idea that existence is a linear progression to evolve through time. That is to say, the object of existence is a monumental one — one of achievement and milestone. In such a world, there exist potentials in the future which are seen as Good, while Evil or suffering is something to be overcome on your path to ascension. This sets the stage for a war between Good and Evil, and it is through this lens that the West has historically seen evil: A malevolent force to be fought and eventually overcome so that life may exist in a perfect heaven with all good and no bad.
The East, on the other hand, has historically seen the world in terms of cycles and of coming and going instead of one long linear quest to heaven. Instead of a war between Good and Evil, the East sees things as an eternal dance between positive and negative, symbolized by the Ying Yang. In this view, like in a dance, there is give and take between both sides. Where one side takes the other gives, and back and forth the two sides play, keeping an eternal balance. In fact, the entire phenomenon of the world is made up of different manifestations of the same positive/negative polarity (light/dark, small/big, hot/cold, etc.), all stemming from a one unified source “behind” it all, which can be described as “God”.
Using the Eastern theory of Good and Evil, we can more clearly see why the Western idea, that Good and Evil negate each other, is inaccurate in a sense. While it can be said that Good and Evil are opposites, they are only opposite in quality but not in their existential or ontological state. This is to say that while the quality of Good can negate the quality of Evil at any certain point in “metaphysical time and space” (and vice-versa), the existence of Good or Evil cannot negate the existence of the other. This is because the negation of the existence of Good is not the existence of Evil. The negation, and indeed opposite, of the existence of Good (and Evil) is a stateless void with no quality of Good/Evil at all. In fact, the presence of Good or Evil in one space must be balanced by the presence of the opposite in some other space in order to exist at all. It is in the same way on a magnet that, while the quality of one pole’s charge being positive precludes the same pole from having the quality of a negative charge, the negative pole’s charge must still always exist to the same degree as the positive pole’s charge. You can never “cut off” the negative charge and have only positive — you can only reduce the size of the magnet or throw it away all together.
To use an example, we can substitute the polarity of Good and Evil with the more measurable physical polarity of Hot and Cold. I contend that you could never have the sensation of “Hot” without also knowing the sensation of “Cold”. One might argue that they could theoretically spend the rest of their life at a pleasant 72f degrees and never experience cold again. Yet, it is only because the sensations of Hot and Cold exist in your mind that you are able to enjoy the experience of 72 degrees.
It is important to note that it is not the actual temperature that is of importance here; rather, it is the subjective phenomenon or feeling of varying temperatures that is unique to the individual. Hot and Cold, like any polarity, only exist relative to each other — this is why one can only be actualized to the same degree that the other is able to be actualized. A human was evolved with the capacity to know a certain range of potential temperatures that registers from freezing cold to boiling hot. This is the same for a creature that may have evolved to live in volcanic vents with temperatures in the several hundred degrees, and that may experience 72 degrees as uninhabitably cold. Nevertheless, the range of subjective experience of Hot to Cold sensations for the creature may be reasonably assumed to be the same or at least in proportion to the human. Thus, if you had no concept of Hot or Cold previously, then 72 degrees would feel like nothing to you until you had something to contrast it with (which your body has intrinsically, having inherited its genetic coding born from evolution).
Indeed, the fact that you can only know the sensation of Hot by simultaneously knowing (even if on an unconscious level) the sensation of cold is the reason why our range of perceptions can shift on the temperature scale. Imagine somebody who is raised in sunny Los Angeles, and then moves to the Arctic. After a period of time their range of temperature perception will shift downward, such that what was freezing cold in Los Angeles will start to feel normal in the Arctic for the individual. Then upon returning to Los Angeles, a mild 72 degrees may suddenly feel swelteringly hot. An increase in the capacity to feel Cold (the temperature shift from Los Angeles to the Arctic) was met simultaneously with the capacity to feel greater Heat. The frigid feeling of negative temperatures is now balanced by the newly boiling feeling of the Los Angeles Summer — a temperature that was relatively mild for the individual before the expansion of the experience of Cold.
Let us examine another example of this phenomenon by going back to the Good/Evil polarity. Imagine you are an orphan and grew up with no family to speak of, and one day as an adult you make friends with someone and have a wonderful relationship. In this scenario, imagine that the greatest Good in your world is this friendship, which would imply that the greatest Evil in this world would be for your friend to be murdered. Now as a thought experiment, suppose that we want to create a world where the Good was increased from the original scenario, such that instead of being born an orphan you were born with a loving mother. Now in this second scenario, it is reasonable to assume that the greatest Good of having a loving relationship with a mother is even greater (in absolute terms) than the greatest Good of a wonderful friendship. We can see that by increasing the greatest Good, we necessarily and instantaneously increased the greatest Evil, as the murder of your mother surely contains more suffering (again in absolute terms) than the murder of your friend.
Now one may argue that it is only the potentiality of murder that one has created, not the actualization of it. However, a potentiality must (by definition) be allowed to be actualized — otherwise it doesn’t truly exist as a potentiality. One might further contend that the omnipotent God could create a force field to protect the mother, and thus the potential for murder may never be allowed to actualize by means of God’s sheer force and will. However, you must see that a relationship with someone that you can never lose will never be as precious as one with someone that may be taken at a moment’s notice. By removing the negative potential, you merely reduce the range of sensation between Good and Evil (or suffering more aptly put in this case) in the same way that you merely create a smaller magnet by cutting off the negative “half”. The level of suffering has been reduced, but so has the level of bliss. Now finally, one may venture to argue that a relationship with someone who is always there is no less blissful or valuable (or whichever measure you would like to use for “Good”) than someone who may not always be there; but I would in turn venture to suggest that if you were to use the full force of your imagination in comparing these scenarios, you will find it not to be the case. To help illustrate why, imagine a heaven where you could have whatever pleasure you wanted at your heart’s desire. After a while you may surely get bored and indeed numb from your pleasures in such a way, that to get some excitement (and therefore pleasure again), you would have to introduce some sort of risk. Indeed it is only with the introduction of the negative (risk) that you may increase the degree of positive experience.
In conclusion, we have seen that the Problem of Evil in religion is founded upon a misconstrued theory of Good and Evil. By understanding how Good and Evil exist as a unified polarity, we can see that even a Judeo-Christian conception of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God would be both unwilling and unable to erase all Evil from existence while maintaining the Good. The creation of any Good necessarily implies a proportional increase for the ontological possibility of Evil, just as the creation of any Evil necessarily implies a proportional increase for the ontological possibility of Good. The two are in fact irrevocably bound, as is God.
