The Problem of Evil and Suffering

Overview

Recall questions on the inconsistent triad, moral and non-moral evil, the logical and evidential forms of the problem, Mackie's Evil and Omnipotence and his rejection of the free will defence, Hume's case from needless suffering, and whether evil makes belief irrational.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What exactly is the problem of evil?

   Model answer

   Not that suffering is unpleasant, which nobody disputes, but that it seems incompatible with the God most theists describe. If God is all-powerful he could prevent it; if he is perfectly good he would want to; and yet it happens on an enormous scale. Something in that set of claims appears to have to give way: God's power, God's goodness, or God's existence.

2. 2

   Set out the inconsistent triad and explain what makes it look inconsistent.

   Model answer

   The three claims that God is omnipotent, that God is wholly good, and that evil exists. By themselves they do not formally contradict one another, so Mackie added two further principles he took any theist to accept: that a good being eliminates evil as far as it can, and that there are no limits to what an omnipotent being can do. With those in place the three cannot all stand, which is why the argument works from the believer's own commitments rather than importing anything from outside.

3. 3

   Distinguish moral and non-moral evil, and explain why the distinction matters.

   Model answer

   Moral evil is suffering caused by the deliberate or negligent acts of free agents: cruelty, war, exploitation, neglect. Non-moral or natural evil is suffering that arises from the way the world works, with nobody to blame: earthquakes, disease, famine, predation. The distinction matters because the standard defence, that God permits evil for the sake of human freedom, applies straightforwardly only to the first. Natural evil has to be accounted for in some other way, which is why it does the harder work in the sceptic's case.

4. 4

   What is the difference between the logical and the evidential forms of the problem?

   Model answer

   The logical form claims that God and any evil whatever are strictly incompatible, so theism is not merely unlikely but incoherent. The evidential form concedes that some evil might be compatible with God but argues that the quantity, the distribution and the apparent pointlessness of actual suffering - the animal dying unseen in a forest fire, the child who suffers and dies unknown - make God's existence improbable. Showing a bare logical possibility answers the first; it does not touch the second.

5. 5

   What did J Mackie argue about evil and omnipotence?

   Model answer

   That the theologian's position is positively irrational rather than merely unproven: the beliefs held about God's power, God's goodness and the reality of evil cannot all be maintained together, so one of them must be surrendered. His aim was to show that theology conflicts with itself, and having set the conflict out he worked through the standard replies one by one to show that each either fails or quietly abandons one of the three claims while appearing to keep it.

6. 6

   Which standard defences did Mackie reject, and on what grounds?

   Model answer

   That good needs evil as its contrast, which makes evil logically necessary and so caps omnipotence, and which would in any case require only a trace of evil rather than the world we actually have. That evil is a means to good, which again subjects God to causal constraints as a human engineer is constrained. That the whole is better for containing some evil, to which he answered that if suffering is justified by the courage it produces, the theist still has no account of malice and cruelty, which are evils at that second level. And the appeal to free will, which he treated separately.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.