A Few Logical Problems Of Evil
They're Not Dead
1
P1 God can bring about any metaphysically possible state of affairs
P2 If evils serve some greater purpose, a world where the greater purpose is fulfilled is a metaphysically possible state of affairs
Therefore, if evils serve a greater purpose, God can bring about a world where the greater purpose is fulfilled
This means God can’t have a morally sufficient reason for allowing suffering. Let’s look at a series of theodicies that this argument blows to bits.
A) Free Will: If free will is intrinsically valuable, God could give us free will, without needing suffering. Here are a few ways.
1) We could have free will but no ability to harm others. This isn’t paradoxical. Stephen Hawkings plausibly couldn’t harm others, but he had free will. Also, we could be made infinitely happy, so we wouldn’t be sad about that and we could have infinitely rich experience.
2) God could make us all able to act on our will but could make us all desire the good. If we accept that evil is a form of irrationality, God could just make us very rational, and have no desire to do evil. This obviously wouldn’t eliminate free will. I have free will but I don’t want to viciously torture people.
3) Why is free will intrinsically valuable. People generally say that absent free will we wouldn’t enjoy life, we’d just be zombies. But God could make us enjoy life and not be zombies. He is omnipotent.
B) Soul building.
This one is easy, God could just create us with very robust souls.
C) Predictable Laws.
God could have predictable laws and not have lots of suffering. Also, predictable laws are not intrinsically valuable, they’re only valuable because they allow us to operate on our will. God could let us do that, being omnipotent. We could have gravity and such and the ability to act on our will without lots of people dying.
D) Skeptical Theism.
Any purpose God could have for evil could just be enabled by an omnipotent being, sans suffering. Skeptical theists will often give the analogy of a parent who causes their children to suffer for a surgery. However, in this case, the parent only gives their child a surgery because they’re not omnipotent. If a parent could cure their child’s cancer without needing any suffering, that would obviously be better.
2
P1 If God exists, there is no natural suffering for which the world would be better if it weren’t created
P2 If there is no natural suffering for which the world would be better if it weren’t created then all sufferings either make the world better because they exist, or because eliminating them makes the world enough better to outweigh the harm caused by them
P3 There are examples of suffering which neither make the world better because they exist nor because eliminating them makes the world enough better to outweigh the harm caused by them
Therefore, God does not exist.
Let’s examine the premises.
P1 Is true. God wouldn’t do things that make the world worse if he’s perfectly good.
P2 Is also true. If the world is better because of the suffering then there are only two options. Either the world is better because of the suffering continuing, or getting rid of the suffering makes the world so much better that it can outweigh the harms of the suffering. This can be shown with the following syllogism
P1 If the world is better because of suffering then either the world is better because the suffering is eliminated or because it is not (or both)
This is a true dichotomy
P2 If the world is better because suffering is not eliminated then then that suffering makes the world better because it exists
P3 If the world is better because suffering is eliminated then getting rid of the suffering makes the world so much better that it can outweigh the harms of the suffering
These in conjunction prove premise 2.
Now for premise 3 this one is also obvious. There are some examples of evil that don’t make the world better because they’re eliminated and which obviously make the world worse. Examples include child molestation, malaria, torture, cluster headaches, toe stubbing, depression, burning to death, nausea, animal suffering, pain during childbirth, historical suffering (most people died at a young age historically), smallpox, covid, dementia, earthquakes, hunger, etc.
Let’s take these one by one. Though note, that if even one of these is gratuitous, that would be enough to prove my premise.
Child molestation: Child molestation occurs largely because people have a sexual attraction to children. It’s not clear that we’ll ever be able to eradicate this. It also seems clear that the world is worse because lots of people want to (and do) rape children. Even if we found some great way to get rid of that desire, it’s obvious that the billions of children who are sexually abused experience so much suffering, such that the world where hundreds of millions of kids are raped before we find a way to solve the problem is worse than one in which humans just didn’t want to rape children.
Malaria: As we know, “In the 20th century alone, malaria claimed between 150 million and 300 million lives, accounting for 2 to 5 percent of all deaths.” The way malaria kills people is the following. Malaria primarily kills children under five and does so in the following ways “Malaria deaths are usually related to one or more serious complications, including:
Cerebral malaria. If parasite-filled blood cells block small blood vessels to your brain (cerebral malaria), swelling of your brain or brain damage may occur. Cerebral malaria may cause seizures and coma.
Breathing problems. Accumulated fluid in your lungs (pulmonary edema) can make it difficult to breathe.
Organ failure. Malaria can damage the kidneys or liver or cause the spleen to rupture. Any of these conditions can be life-threatening.
Anemia. Malaria may result in not having enough red blood cells for an adequate supply of oxygen to your body's tissues (anemia).
Low blood sugar. Severe forms of malaria can cause low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), as can quinine — a common medication used to combat malaria. Very low blood sugar can result in coma or death.”
We’re slowly eradicating malaria. However, even after we cure it, the benefit of curing it will not be enough to offset millions of kids being killed. A world without malaria would be better than a world with malaria where we eventually get our shit together, and stop malaria. We’ve eradicated smallpox, but the world is worse with smallpox having existed.
Torture: Read this, then tell me if you think that our capacity to experience horrific agony and our inability to shut off our pain makes the world better. We’ll likely never solve this problem of being able to suffer horribly. I don’t think that the fact that a 16 year old can be raped hundreds of times and have the other ghastly things done happen to her, and still keep suffering makes the world better.
Cluster Headaches: They make the world worse. To quote Daley “Cluster headache is more than just a headache. It is a severe neurological condition, sometimes known as a “suicide headache” because many patients have suicidal thoughts during attacks. The pain experienced during a cluster headache attack is excruciating and is said to be comparable to the pain of childbirth. Such attacks can last from 15 minutes to three hours and can occur several times per day. The pain is almost always on one side and typical features of an attack may include bloodshot or teary eyes, droopy eyes and a runny nose or blocked nostrils. Around one in 1,000 people experience cluster headache. It’s perceived as a rare disease, but in fact is as common as well-known neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease. Getting the right treatment for this condition is difficult, as our recent study showed.”
It’s far from clear that we’ll ever solve the problem. But even if we do, the notion that they’ll make the world overall better as a result of their existence is absurd. Headaches that are so painful that they cause lots of people to commit suicide is far worse than the pats that we’ll give ourselves on the back after we eradicate them.
Toe Stubbing: Toe stubbing can be very painful. We all know what it’s like. It’s also true that we’ll probably never solve it. So why make it so damn painful.
Depression: Depression causes lots of people to experience immense misery and commit suicide. It’s unlikely that we’ll eradicate it at any point. However, a world without depression would obviously be better. For people who are severely depressed before they find some treatment for it that moots its effects, they don’t tend to report that they’re glad that they suffered from depression. So why does God make us depressed?
Burning to Death: We’ll never eradicate the phenomena of people burning to death, almost certainly. So why make it so horrifically painful. Think about what it would be like to burn alive. Given how terrible it is, is it really plausible that there’s no morally sufficient reason for not lessening it at all? I don’t think so.
Nausea: We’ve all been nauseous at some point. It’s very unpleasant. It’s both true that nausea plausibly makes the world worse and that we won’t eradicate nausea in a way that makes it make the world overall better because of its existence.
Animal suffering. Most animals live short lives of immense suffering. They’re mostly r strategists, meaning they have oodles of offspring, very few of whom will survive for very long. Tuna, for example, lay 10 million eggs, very few of whom will survive. Thus, the vast majority of sentient beings die, having very little suffering. Much of this suffering has been going on for millions of years, so we’ll never solve it absent time machines. Thus, this suffering both makes the world worse and is not preventable in a way that makes the world overall better. We can be more specific. The suffering of the dinosaurs who got cancer seems obviously gratuitous.
Childbirth is very painful and has killed many women historically. While we’ve made the problem less bad, it’s still clear that the world would be better if it won’t terribly painful. Seriously, what’s the morally sufficient reason for it?
Historical suffering: Most suffering was experienced in the past and is thus something that we can’t prevent. The people who were tortured in the past show an example of a suffering that won’t be solved (absent time machines), and make the world worse.
Smallpox: It’s clearly bad, “During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths.” It’s much easier to rationalize away evils that exist, with status quo bias. However, smallpox has been eradicated. So think about a world where smallpox came back. That would be horrific. Yet God could have made a world where smallpox never existed. Deaths from smallpox are horrific “There haven’t been any confirmed cases of smallpox since it was wiped out. Before that, smallpox was a life-threatening disease. Millions of people got smallpox every year. Up to 30% of people died of their illness. Death was due to systemic shock (body-wide infection) and toximemia (toxins in the blood). Smallpox is very contagious disease, with secondary attacks affecting up to 80% of house hold contacts. Often, people who survived the disease had long-term problems, such as blindness and severe scarring.” God is a bioterrorist, who brought smallpox into the world, killing millions if not billions. Was the benefit of wiping out smallpox really greater than the total suffering experienced by every single smallpox victim? That’s not plausible at all.
Covid: We’re all well aware of how bad covid is. God could surely have made covid never exist and affect humans. So why didn’t he? If anything, the response to Covid has made the world worse. Covid makes families not spend time together and decreased educational outcomes. Thus, it’s not plausible that either Covid or the response to Covid made the world better.
Dementia: Dementia is terrible. People slowly wither away. If we got rid of Dementia, its existence would still not make the world better.
Earthquakes: 20,000 are killed by earthquakes every year. Those deaths come from “collapsing walls, flying glass, and falling objects caused by the ground shaking.” We will never solve earthquakes unless we reshape tectonic plates. Is it really plausible that the world is better because God made us on a planet in which we get crushed under buildings.
Hunger kills 25,000 people per day. Is the world really better because of this. We’ll never solve hunger probably and if we did, the world would still be worse for its existence.
Now you might say that this is an evidential problem of evil. Call it what you want, though I use instances of evil to support a deductively valid argument. I think the distinction between the two is ill conceived.
3
P1 If Utilitarianism is true and God exists there is no suffering
P2 Utilitarianism is true
P3 There is suffering
Therefore, God does not exist.
I’ve already argued for utilitarianism.
4
P1 For any two agents otherwise identical, if one brings about a better state of affairs than the other, that one is greater
P2 Therefore, a being who brings about a better state of affairs than god and is otherwise identical, it would be greater than god
P3 A being who brings about a better state of affairs than god and is otherwise identical to god is metaphysically possible
Therefore, a being greater than god is possible
If a being greater than god is possible, god is not maximally great
If god exists, he is maximally great
Therefore, god does not exist