Thoughts in a Haystack

"The very notion of impersonal evil evaporates in the face of eternity."

That's how I, growing up in a strict fundamentalist Christian home, was taught to see it. "It is for our good, in the light of eternity." "With eternity's values in view," as the old hymn puts it.

And this makes sense, if you accept that there is an eternity, and that there will be good results in that eternity.

It still fails, in that in the Christian and Muslim eternities, at least, in that for the majority of people, the results will be even more evil. (As defined by: "They won't like it, nor will they ever come to like it.")

And then, as you mentioned, a major difficulty lies in the definition of "evil". We usually mean, "something that the majority of us shudder at." But that's from a human perspective. (As they reminded me, so often, growing up.)

From God's point of view, it may be different; He wouldn't shudder at that baby dying of cancer, or genocide, or tsunamis, maybe; maybe His value system is different than ours. But that would make Him "evil" in our definition of the term.

When we say "God is good", we are using our definition; He is good "to us". It makes no sense, then to switch definitions in order to say that His "good" is not ours.

And round and round we go.
 

I'm also showing a slightly-better-than-YouTube version at my blog.
 

One can always make up excuses for God. A Universalist afterlife (ie. everyone gets to heaven, possibly after a stint in Purgatory), say; or something like C.S.Lewis' The Great Divorce, or just a vague "One day we will understand, and all manner of thing will be very well". But at some point I think one is entitled to use Occam's Razor to slice it all off: the simplest explanation is that there is no cosmic entity with an interest in moral matters.
 

In my mind, evil is anything that is contrary to the will of God.

While this may be a definition it doesn't explain where evil came from. Evolution does not provide me with an adequate explanation of the role of evil, nor happiness for that matter. I've wondered what it might have looked like from God's perspective under the human question:

Why Has God Created Hundreds of Millions of People Who Are Destined for Eternal Separation From Him?

. I Am God.
. I Am before anything else.
. I Am above and beyond anything else.
. I Am perfectly Pure, Holy and Righteous. There is nothing imperfect or "wrong" in Me.
. Anything that is in rebellion to My perfect Purity, Holiness and Righteousness can never come into My presence.
. I Am completely and utterly just.
. I Am slow to anger; filled with great patience. I Am merciful and filled with grace.
. I Am Love.
. Just as there cannot be the perception of up without a down, in without an out, hot without cold and light without darkness, there cannot be Love without evil. This is a spiritual reality or law.
. Because I Am Love, there is evil rebellion against My love.
. This evil has been allowed to exist first in the presence of rebellious angels.
. I Am One and I Am plural with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
. In My Spirit, I love My Son.
. Love is the greatest entity to ever exist. As a gift and a blessing, I want something special for My Son to love and I want that special something to love My Son.
. That something, like the angels, must be created by Me.

. It is My right to declare and uphold the terms and conditions of My creation.

. The special part of My creation will be human beings. They will be made in My image, possessing portions and degrees of My attributes and My characteristics.
. I will make My justice and mercy known in and through human beings.
. I want humans to love (Obey) My Son because in doing so, humans will enjoy their highest state of being.
. I want to reward that love with eternity in paradise, ie. eternity in My presence.
. For their love to be real, I know that humans must have the choice to not love My Son.
. For their love to be real, I must allow humans to rebel against My love.
. If the first humans that I create love and obey Me, that love will be passed on to their offspring. That love will be inherited. It will not be a choice. ‘‘Love’’ will be robotic.
. If the first humans that I create, rebel against My love by disobeying Me, then that spirit of rebellion will be passed on to their offspring.
. In order for any humans to find fulfilment in truly loving Me, I must accept that all humans must first refuse to love Me.
. No one will be able to love My Son without the help of My grace and mercy.
. I will provide those of my choosing with an opportunity to love Me and to obey Me.
. Through this plan I will demonstrate that I Am Love and that I Am Just.
. Because of who I Am, I cannot create in humans a spirit of Love and then draw them to evil to create real choice. I can only allow rebellion / evil to enter the human race in order to create real choice, and then save those who wish to be delivered from evil.
. I will draw back my hand of protection and allow this course of history to unfold.

. It is My right to declare and uphold the terms and conditions of My creation.

. Love causes growth. Evil and rebellion cause death and destruction.
. Because I love humans, I hate the rebellion that causes their destruction.
. Those who continue in a spirit of rebellion will be objects of My anger.
. Objects of My anger cannot and will not be tolerated in My presence.
. For the very survival of the gift to My Son, My justice, mercy, grace, love and patience, MUST be clearly displayed to humans
(a) So they will know that they should repent of their rebellion and
(b) To show them that they have a place to turn to for rescue from their rebellion.
- Humans will know My Justice because they know in their hearts that rebellion against Me is wrong. Those who continue in their rebellion will die spiritually and eternally.
.Because all will be born into a state of rebellion, it is only My Grace that will ensure that some humans get what they don’t deserve (life in eternal paradise) while My Mercy will ensure that those same humans don’t get what they do deserve (eternal separation from Me).
.They will know My Patience because I will persist in blessing those who continue in evil, until all those who are going to receive My merciful salvation have turned from their rebellion.
.They will know My Love in that I, in the form of My Son, will forgive evil by taking my own punishment and suffering my own wrath for the horrible act of continued rebellion against a Creator God who is perfectly pure, holy, righteous, just, merciful, slow to anger, filled with great patience, filled with grace and abounding in Love.
. I will rescue those who are not looking for Me, love those who hate Me, and make peace with those who are My enemies.
. The rebellious cannot complain because they are in fact guilty of rebellion. The saved cannot boast because they have done nothing to deserve salvation.

. It is My right to declare and uphold the terms and conditions of My creation.

The real question then is not, "Why did God create hundreds of millions of people who are destined to be eternally separated from Him?" The real question to be asked is:
Why Did God Create and Then Save For Eternity in Paradise, Hundreds of Millions of People Who Should Have Been Eternally Separated From Him.

Like I say, this doesn't address the issue of where did evil come from, but it my explain how God made use of it as a reality. Maybe.
 

Zack: I saw that and was going to add a notation anyway but thanks.
 

That's how I, growing up in a strict fundamentalist Christian home, was taught to see it.

I never thought that it was a new argument but I hope the counterexample of the child's vaccine might be a fresh way of putting it.

It still fails, in that in the Christian and Muslim eternities, at least, in that for the majority of people, the results will be even more evil.

Now don't you and Eamon go all Gish-gallopy on me. The sole issue I was discussing was the Argument from Evil, which purports to be a form of empiric argument. What you both raise is the Argument from 'Your Theology Sucks'. I heartily agree that most beliefs about hell and who is going there are repulsive but I know of no empiric evidence about that theology either way. In short, it a matter of my bare opinion which is not much of an argument.

When we say "God is good", we are using our definition; He is good "to us". It makes no sense, then to switch definitions in order to say that His "good" is not ours.

But my argument is that we cannot support our identification of either good or evil. There is no switch of definitions involved and there is no way of telling if God's version is any different than ours. He could be simply be operating on superior knowledge that we will achieve later.

Lastly, besides the fact that it is often hard to identify the explanation that qualifies as "the simplest," Occam's Razor is nothing more than a systematic guess. I have no problem with using it in support of one's beliefs, but it should be kept in mind that it adds nothing to claims that atheism is based on "reason."
 

My understanding is that the Argument from Evil is effective against the Christian concept of a God as an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipresent deity.

The defence that an immediate evil can be justified, or at least excused, on the grounds that it is a necessary pre-condition of some prospective good founders against the definition. Feeble and fallible beings like ourselves may be forced to make the lesser-of-two-evils choice because we have no alternative. The same cannot be said of the Christian God. Not only does such a god know in advance of the evil act to be committed, not only does it have the power to prevent it but, as a necessary being, it has no choice but to prevent it.

The 'free will' defence faces the same objection. Allowing us free will must inevitably allow some amongst us to commit evil acts. Again, however, these would be foreseeable to the Christian God who would have no choice to prevent them.

The real problem, as you say though, is to define what is meant by 'evil' in the absence of a supreme moral authority like God.
 

My understanding is that the Argument from Evil is effective against the Christian concept of a God as an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipresent deity.

Well, McGinn and Miller certainly acted as if it is effective. Miller all but anointed it as the premier philosophical argument in favor of atheism. My interest is partly because if he really believes that, his atheism is on pretty shaky philosophical grounds.

The defence that an immediate evil can be justified, or at least excused, on the grounds that it is a necessary pre-condition of some prospective good founders against the definition.

I agree that God can't hide behind any alleged inability on his part to accomplish good through good means. But I am arguing that what we happen not to like (like an injection) is not synonymous with "evil," and we cannot presently know what is evil if the whole of our earthly life is just an infinitesimal instant in an eternal life.

The 'free will' defence faces the same objection. Allowing us free will must inevitably allow some amongst us to commit evil acts. Again, however, these would be foreseeable to the Christian God who would have no choice to prevent them.

I skipped over this argument because McGinn and Miller did. McGinn waived at it on the way to the Argument from Impersonal Evil. I suspect their indifference is because it has less rhetorical power than the notion of a child dying while an indifferent God stands by. We are too used to cruel human forces to find it shocking. In any event, that is more of an Argument from Bad Design (God could have made us good enough that, in exercising our free will, we did what is good) than an argument from evil.

The real problem, as you say though, is to define what is meant by 'evil' in the absence of a supreme moral authority like God.

No, that's not what I'm arguing. I'm saying that, with the knowledge that comes with an eternal perspective, we might find, even with our present moral sense, that what we now think is evil is not. Since we can recognize this possibility but cannot in this life attain such a perspective, we are incapable of confidently passing judgment on what is evil for purposes of making the Argument from Impersonal Evil.

Oh, and Makarios ... since we are on this subject, I have one word for you: Euthyphro.
 

The "Argument from Evil" is a problem for deists, atheists, and philosophical theists. Most (all?) religious traditions don't see it as problematic at all.

For those religious persons who have concerned themselves with it, the "problem" with the Argument seems to arise in the context of trying to attach some sort of philosophical theism to their religious tradition. In the Christian tradition, this is precisely how the problem with the Argument arose, first in the context of Platonic philosophy and much later on in the context of Aristotelean philosophy. Now there is nothing wrong with that, and two of the greatest Christian theologians used that context as a jumping off point for their theology. But we should never forget that what they ultimately came up with was a theology, and not a philosophical system.

That's why all the 'solutions' to this "problem", are in the nature of apologia or what is known in philosophical argument as a defense. A defense is not, nor is it supposed to be, a refutation of a premise. And at the end of a defense, one can still theoretically hold to the original premises or to its opposite.

The bottom line is that no one is ever going to be able to prove religious belief by philosophical argument, much less by scientific investigation. If you are a reductionist who believes that the only valid epistemology is a theoretic one, then you are going to follow that belief and no defense against this particular "problem" is going to carry any weight whatsoever. If you are a religious person, you are often left wondering just what the problem is in the first place.
 

with the knowledge that comes with an eternal perspective, we might find, even with our present moral sense, that what we now think is evil is not.

So the reply to the Argument from Impersonal Evil is that this could in fact be the Best of All Possible Worlds?
 

So the reply to the Argument from Impersonal Evil is that this could in fact be the Best of All Possible Worlds?

Does it need to be the best possible world in order to avoid being evil? Is there nothing in between?

We could start a discussion on the Argument from Annoyance, Inconvenience and the Discomfort of Vaginal Itching if you like.

;-)