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From: public@wheaton.UUCP (Calvin Culver)
Newsgroups: mod.religion.christian
Subject: Re: God's use of his power
Message-ID: <6694@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sun, 2-Nov-86 03:08:03 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.6694
Posted: Sun Nov  2 03:08:03 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Nov-86 01:11:35 EST
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[This is in response to the two postings that accuse God of being
 evil because he allows or causes so much evil in the world.  I am
 omitting the specific quotations --clh]

This is known in philosophical circles as the Problem of Evil and has been
an argument against the existence of the Christian God for hundreds of
years.  Humbly, I would like to provide what to my mind seems to be an
adequate response to the problem.  However, I am not very good at organized
philosophical discussion ad lib, so please bear with my ramblings.

The traditional argument runs something like this (please, anyone, correct
me where I'm wrong; it's been a long time since I had philosophy of
religion):

A:  God exists, and is omnipotent, omniscient and
omni-benevolent.

B:  Evil exists.

C:  The existence of evil and an omnipotent, omniscient,
omni-benevolent God and evil are incompatible.

Therefore

D:  God does not exist (since evil obviously does).

This is not the most eloquent expression of the problem but I think it'll
do.  For the purposes of the argument A is assumed.  B is obviously true
(unless you're a gnostic) so we won't argue that one either.  The argument
thus focuses around C, and runs something like the following:

An omni-benevolent being always, within its power and
knowledge, performs that act which produces the greatest good.  God is
omni-benevolent, therefore, he always, within his power and knowledge,
acts for the greatest good.  Now, in here somewhere comes the discussion of
what is meant by "acting for the greatest good".  For us mere mortals this
brings to mind images of weighing alternatives to see which produces the
greatest good (or alternatively prevents the greatest evil) and performing
that alternative.  For example, lets say I am a life guard at a public
beach.  Suddenly, before my eyes, three of the swimmers begin to drown.  Of
the three, two are fairly small (I could hold both of them in my grasp at
once) and, in addition, are located nearby one another.  The third swimmer,
however, is physically larger and is located off by himself, away from 
the others.  What do I do?  I cannot rescue all three and must therefore
let at least one drown.  Conceivably, my choice would be to rescue the two
and let the one drown as this would be doing the greatest good (saving two
lives as opposed to one) or preventing the greatest evil (the drowning death
of two individuals as opposed to one).  An evil has still occurred (a person
drowned) but I can still claim to have done good by rescuing the two.  I
have done all I could within my power (I could not be both places at once
and in any case was not physically capable of rescuing all three even had
they all been in the same location) and knowledge (no technique was known to
me by which all three could have been saved.  Perhaps one existed but I did
not know about it).

But, this sort of argument cannot apply to God since he is omnipotent and
omniscient; that is, nothing lies outside his power or knowledge.  (That
is, nothing which is logically possible.  Arguments such as Can God build a
rock so large that even he couldn't lift it? don't count because they set up
logically contradictions.)  Therefore, claims of God allowing some evil in
order to prevent a greater evil don't seem to work here, as it should be
just as easy for him to prevent both evils as to prevent just one or the
other, shouldn't it?  Therefore, since part of the definition of
omni-benevolence is that the being always acts, within the limits of his
knowledge and power, to produce the greatest good or to prevent the greatest
evil, and, since evil obviously exists, we are left with only three
possibilities.  Either God is not omniscient (evils occur, not because God
doesn't desire to prevent them; he just isn't aware of them), or he is not
omnipotent (he desires to prevent all instances of evil; it simply is not
within his power to do so).  Or, if he is both omniscient and omnipotent,
then he cannot be omni-benevolent. 

One traditional Christian defense to this argument has been called the
free-will defense and runs something as follows:

A:  God created man with free-will.
B:  Free-will involves the ability to make moral choices of one's own (by
definition), that is, the ability to choose rightly. 
C:  In order to be able to choose rightly, there must also exist the
possibility of choosing wrongly.

Therefore (sorry, I can't seem to come up with a nice, neatly packaged D),
moral choice must include at least the possibility of choosing wrongly, and
in fact much (Christianity says *all*--with one significant exception) of
humanity *has* made wrong choices.  It is these choices which have resulted in
much of the evil which exists (man's actions against other men, against
himself, and against the rest of nature) as man continues to make wrong
choices.  That is, man himself is responsible for much of the evil which
exists, not God.

As for the three propositions A, B and C, it seems to me that A is obvious
(at least, if you're not a fatalist, it's obvious that man has free-will;
the bit about God creating man is assumed here).  B seems to be true by
definition.  C also seems to be intuitively obvious (after all, if someone
gave me a choice of ice cream flavors consisting of vanilla, vanilla or
vanilla, I can't really be said to be choosing my flavor; thus, I can't
really be said to be *choosing* rightly if that's the only choice I've got).

There are a number of choices that could be (in fact, have been quite
frequently) raised to this.  First, it might be said, this is all fine and
dandy, but since God is omniscient he must have pre-known before he created
anything that man was going to make wrong choices.  So why did he still
choose to create?  Doesn't this still make him responsible for man's
actions?  I would respond that it does not, and would argue as follows:  my
wife and I decide to have a child.  However, I know right now that any child
I produce will at some time in his or her life make wrong moral
choices (if anyone knows how to raise a kid who doesn't e-mail me!).  Does
this make me responsible for my child's mistakes?  We don't seem to hold
that this does (at least not after the child attains a certain age of
responsibility).  Each person, we believe, is responsible for his or her own
choices.  In the same way, God cannot be held accountable for his
"children's" errors.

Again, it might be argued, God pre-knows what each person is going to do,
what choices each individual is going to make before he or she makes that
choice.  Why not, just before the individual makes the choice, pull a few
magic strings and cause him to make the right choice?  But then how can it
be said the person has free choice?  Or, instead, wait until a person makes
a wrong choice, *then* reach down and prevent him from acting on that choice
in order to prevent the evil that is going to be caused by the choice.  But
again, it's hard to see how the person could be said to have free choice
under such circumstances.

Again it has been argued (and this was the argument that I found most
convincing), if God pre-knows each person's actions then why cannot he
simply look into his crystal ball at the set of all possible individuals
that he could create, determine which of all those individuals would only
and always, by free choice, make only the right choices, and then create only
those persons who would choose rightly?  Thus, the world is such that all
human beings will freely choose rightly.  The response to this (as proposed
by Alvin Plantinga) is simply "Maybe there aren't any."  That is, maybe God
looked in his crystal ball and couldn't find even one of all the possible
persons he could create who would always choosed rightly. 

This discussion is obviously flawed in several ways.  First, it only discusses
those evils which man himself perpetrates.  It says nothing about "natural
evils"--those which are not caused by man, such as a fawn suffering and
dying horribly in a forest fire, or a sudden wind shear throwing a jet to
the ground, killing dozens of people, for example.  That is another
discussion entirely, and this is already terribly long.

In addition, it is not thorough.  Many objections more could be raised to
the arguments I have made here.  I have simply discussed the more common
objections raised.  I hope, however, that this will generate further
discussion (at least from those who have persevered and read this far).

Well, thanks for bearing with me.


				       --calvin culver--