Stephen Law on The Problem of Evil

This is Philosophy Bites with me, David Edmonds. And me, Nigel Warburton.

There's one powerful objection to those, like Christians, Jews and Muslims, who believe in an all-powerful, all-good God. Stephen Law is here to discuss it. He teaches at Heathrow College in London and is the editor of the journal Think. Stephen Law, welcome to Philosophy Bites. Thank you for inviting me.

The topic we want to talk about today is the problem of evil. Could you just outline what that is? Well, there are really two problems, not one. If we begin with the thought that God is all powerful. and all good and indeed all knowing the question then is why then does evil exist or Why does evil exist in quite the quantities that it does? There are two different problems here. One problem is called the logical problem of evil. Some people would argue that the existence of God...

is logically incompatible with the existence of any suffering or evil whatsoever. The other problem of evil is this. If you believe that there's an all-powerful, all-good God, Why is there quite so much suffering and evil in the world? Surely an all-powerful, all-good God.

He would have the ability to produce a world with far less suffering in it, and if he's all good, he would surely desire that the world contain far less suffering. Why then is there quite so much suffering? So on the evidential problem, it's the quantity. of evil that's really the issue. Whereas on the logical problem, it's the existence of any evil or any suffering at all is deemed to be a problem. So you're treating suffering as evil. Is that the basic definition you're using of evil?

Well, it's clearly an evil and it tends to be the evil that gets focused on. when people discuss the problem of evil. It might perhaps be better to call the problem of evil the problem of suffering. I mean, the word evil comes with a lot of metaphysical baggage, doesn't it? And actually, we can drop all of the metaphysical baggage and just talk about suffering. The existence of enormous quantities of...

suffering clearly is a bit of a problem for anyone who believes in an all-powerful all-good God. So going back to this distinction between a logical problem of evil and an evidential one, do you think they're both equally important to discuss?

Well they're both very interesting problems. I think that the really serious problem for theists is the evidential problem. Perhaps the logical problem can be dealt with fairly easily it would do to show that an all-powerful all-good god would create some suffering

if that suffering is the price that would have to be paid for some greater good that outweighs it. It would be a better world with the suffering in it. Sounds paradoxical, but it's not. For instance, you might say that compassion... and sympathy are great virtues and it's important then that people have the opportunity to exhibit these virtues but they're not going to be able to exhibit those virtues unless there are some people who are suffering that we can feel sympathy for.

So that's the logical problem, but the evidential problem is the problem, why is there so much suffering? Yeah, that's right. The issue now is not that suffering is logically incompatible with the existence of an all-powerful, all-good God. but that an all-powerful, all-good god surely would not produce a world with quite so much.

suffering in it for me that argument more or less actually settles the question of whether or not god exists it does seem to me that there is overwhelming evidence against the existence of an all-powerful all-good god

Before we talk about that, I think it would be helpful if we thought about what makes a belief reasonable. generally people often get confused about reasonableness and about proof the important thing to remember about reasonableness is that it is a matter of degree beliefs can be more or less reasonable. Some beliefs are very reasonable indeed, some a little bit less reasonable, some not terribly reasonable but not unreasonable and then some beliefs are highly unreasonable.

There is if you like a scale of reasonableness on which we can locate beliefs. If you take the belief that Japan exists. I've never been there, I've never seen it with my own eyes, but it seems to be a very reasonable thing for me to believe because I've got overwhelming evidence that Japan exists. I've eaten in sushi restaurants, I've met people who claim to have come from Japan.

And I've got no reason to suppose that there is some vast international conspiracy to fall Westerners into thinking that Japan is there when in fact it's not. However, having said that, I cannot conclusively prove... that Japan exists. Maybe those people who claim to come from Japan spend hours in makeup before I meet them. So that's a very reasonable thing for me to believe. Other beliefs are a bit less reasonable.

but still quite reasonable. Is there intelligence out there on other planets somewhere else in the universe? That's not an unreasonable thing to believe. We know that intelligent life has evolved here. We know that there are countless millions of planets like this one. On the other hand, we don't have any direct evidence of any such life.

Moving down the scale of reasonableness we reach fairies exist, goblins exist and Elvis Presley is alive and well and living in Swindon. These are beliefs which there is very little evidence. and indeed a great deal of evidence against them despite what you might read on some internet sites. Okay, so we've got this scale of belief from highly plausible to the highly implausible. How does that help us with the problem of whether God exists or not?

Well, the important issue here is not whether or not there is conclusive proof beyond all doubt. It may be that we can't conclusively prove that God does exist. It may be that we cannot conclusively prove... There is no God. Even if we cannot prove it either way, it might still be possible to establish that belief in God is either very reasonable indeed, despite not being proved, or... and this would be my view, very unreasonable, despite not being disproved.

Whether or not we have proof is really not the issue. It's a matter of reasonableness. It certainly won't do for religious people to say, well, you can't prove it either way, so it's a faith issue, so atheism is just as much a faith position as theism. It's simply not true.

can't prove it either way it may well be that the atheist can come up with fantastically good grounds for thinking that there is no god perhaps as good as the grounds that we have for thinking that there are no fairies and after all i can't conclusively prove that there are no fairies at the bottom of my garden

Now you've said that belief in God is not a reasonable position. Why do you believe that? The two things that I would point to are this. First of all, many of the popular arguments for the existence of God... which non-philosophers consider to be pretty persuasive, arguments about design.

Many people would say, what are the chances, they'd say, of the universe being set up just so, so that the stable planets and life can evolve? And it's just astronomically unlikely that that situation should exist by chance. Therefore... It is reasonable to believe that there is some sort of intelligence behind the universe. Okay then.

Yeah, there's some sort of intelligence behind the universe. The problem with this argument is that although it's an argument for there being some sort of intelligence, and maybe it's a good argument, I don't think it is, but let me conceive for the sake of argument that it is. what conclusions can we draw about the personality or the moral character of that intelligence and the answer is really none at all why conclude that the creator is the judeo-christian god who is all-powerful

and all good, supremely benevolent, why draw that conclusion? We have not yet been given any reason at all to draw that conclusion. All we've been told so far is that there is some sort of intelligence behind things.

That argument and others, crude sort of first cause type cosmological arguments, you know, why is there anything at all? There must be a creator who brought everything into existence. All right, then there's a creator, but why do you think he's the Judeo-Christian God? So these arguments...

are not good arguments for the existence of an all-powerful, all-good God. Worse still, there's fantastically good evidence against the existence of there being any such creator. That evidence is the problem of evil. But theists usually have responses to the problem of evil. They've got ways known as theodicies, which explain how there could be evil in the world.

Yes, one of the most popular is the free will explanation of suffering. There are various versions of this. The simplest version says, God gave us free will. He didn't make us... automata that just do.

whatever god commands us to do or makes us do as if we were his puppets dancing on his strings he cut the strings set us free so that we can make our own choices our own decisions and act upon them and unfortunately we sometimes choose to do the wrong thing and we'd start wars we steal and so on suffering results but that suffering is outweighed by the good of free will that sounds pretty convincing to me what's wrong with it

Well, one problem with that as an explanation is that it fails to explain a very great deal of suffering, the natural suffering produced by, for example, natural disasters. Not very long ago, there was an earthquake in Pakistan in which tens of thousands of children were crushed under buildings. They'd just arrived at school. They were trapped under the ground, dying days, weeks later in some cases.

How do we explain that in a manner consistent with the existence of an all-powerful, all-good God? It won't do to say, well, it's had something to do with human free will, because we don't produce earthquakes, not even accidentally. And to add to that, let's not forget that it's not just human beings that suffer. Anyone that's seen the BBC programme Planet Earth will know that we share the world with many sentient beings, the lives of which are absolutely horrific.

Not just now, but it's been that way for hundreds of millions of years. 65 million years ago, there was a mass extinction event, possibly a comet. We don't know exactly, but we know that it wiped 95% of the species from the face of the earth. That would have produced unimaginable suffering, sharpening up the evidential problem of evil.

We could put it like this. An all-powerful, all-good God, he might put some suffering in the world, but he wouldn't put even an ounce of gratuitous and unnecessary suffering in the world. Not even an ounce. Now, when I look at hundreds of millions of years of unimaginable horror, it seems to me that you can't sensibly maintain that there is any such being. What you just said there, with this hundreds of millions of years of suffering...

actually points towards not a good god but perhaps a not very nice god well we could consider that as a hypothesis there's an all-powerful all evil gods i mean the first thing you'll notice is that that hypothesis is just as well supported by some of the standard arguments for the existence of god as the good god hypothesis you know if there's a designer why not an evil designer rather than a good designer

If there's a first cause, why not an evil first cause rather than a good first cause? If I believe in an evil God, I can help myself to those arguments just as quickly and effectively as a Christian can. But of course, no one's going to believe in an evil. god why not well you know look out of the window right now i can see happy laughing children frolicking around in the sunshine

Why would an evil god allow that kind of thing? Surely a supremely malignant being would be interested in torturing us for all eternity with a red-hot poker, not producing rainbows in laughter and sunshine and ice cream. There's just too much. the good stuff in the world for this to be plausibly the creation of a supremely powerful supremely evil being you can see that this problem we might call it the problem of good is just the reverse of the problem of evil if you believe in a

an all-powerful, all-good god you have to explain why there's so much bad stuff. If you believe in an all-powerful, all-bad god you have to explain why there's so much good stuff. It seems to me you could probably develop some very ingenious... Why does an evil god give us a lovely sunset to enjoy? Well, in order to make our appreciation of the ghastly dreariness and ugliness of day-to-day life all the more acute. Why does he give us fit, healthy young bodies?

well yeah for about 10 or 15 years and then slowly and inevitably they slide into decay decrepitude until you end up dying hopelessly ugly incontinent and smelling of we having lived out a short and ultimately meaningless existence i mean what better way could there be of maximizing suffering than giving you something for a short period of time and then slowly and inexorably taking it away

All of the standard theodicies, not all of them, most of them, can be flipped round. And when you flip them round in that way, they're a joke. Well, the question is, why do we take the other ones so seriously then? On the scale of reasonableness, I place evil god very low down. But that's exactly the reason why I place the good god very low down on the scale of reasonableness. So what is a reasonable thing to believe? To get back to the scale of reasonableness...

It seems to me that the evil god and the good god hypotheses are both very low on the scale. A slightly less unreasonable belief would be belief that there is... some sort of intelligence only it is neither all good nor all evil maybe there's a god and he has good days and bad days actually if you look at the old testament pretty obviously that being is not supremely benevolent he's a rather irascible old sod much of the time but he has his good days and if you look at

the world that does seem to fit that hypothesis better than either the evil god hypothesis or the good god hypothesis but frankly we could probably and should probably do without any gods at all Stephen Law thank you very much thank you it was fun And you can hear more Philosophy Bites at www.philosophybites.com.