6. Defining Evil

I know last time I said it would be the last time we discuss the existence of God for a while, but I had a bit of inspiration and decided to tackle this piece sooner. This time around, we’ll be talking about the most-used argument for why God doesn’t exist, the problem of evil.

The problem of evil goes like this:

1.       If God exists, he is all powerful, all knowing, and all good.

2.       If God is all knowing, he knows where evil comes from and how to prevent it.

3.       If God is all good, he desires to prevent evil.

4.       If God is all powerful, he is able to prevent evil.

5.       Evil exists.

6.       Therefore, an all powerful, all knowing, all good God does not exist.

At first glance, this seems to be a very powerful argument against the existence of God. But let’s break it down into pieces.

First, let’s define the terms.

                All-powerful: Able to do anything (except logical contradictions… A story for a different day)

                All- knowing: Knows everything

                All-good: In his essence, good, and desiring the good of his creation

                Evil: Ah… The tricky one. Evil is not merely pain and suffering. These are symptoms of evil. Although many today would say that evil can be found in suffering, it’s not always the case. For example, the pain of chemotherapy brings about a good thing, namely, treating cancer. If we define evil as only things which cause pain, chemotherapy and many other medical procedures would be evil, making doctors… well, basically evil. But that’s not the case. I’m going to propose a new definition for evil- the absence of the good.

Our entire system of language, and even philosophy, reflects this definition. Good things are always gained. Wisdom, knowledge, understanding, they are all seen as being gained. Ignorance is not something gained, but the absence of knowledge. Likewise, when discussing moral systems, those with stricter morals are often seen as being “above” the “common people,” as though they have gained more morals.

Similarly, there are examples in other fields, such as physics. Cold is not in itself a positive quantity. It is actually just the absence of heat. Darkness is not on its own a positive thing. Darkness is merely the absence of light. Death is not a positive thing. A thing does not gain the quality of not being alive. It loses the quality of being alive.

Now, to solidify this position, let’s take a look at an example of something pretty much everyone would agree to be evil: murder.

At first glance, murder seems like an actual thing. It’s an act that is carried out. However, let’s boil that down a bit.

The actual act of the murder is merely the end result of a chain of many things and is not in itself the only part of evil being done.

Where does murder come from? It comes, from the very beginning, for a lack of respect for human life. How do we know this? Because the murderer, to some degree, believes that he is somehow greater than or above his victim. The root cause is a deficiency of respect, a missing virtue.

Now, I do realize that we haven’t actually answered the argument yet. There will be more discussion of it next time.