Evil -- The Facts That Need to be Explained

General handwaivey theodicies don't work

There are particular facts about evil, that seem to rule out God, and defeat all theodicies. Theism must hold that God has a good reason for allowing all the evils. Yet the theodicies generally present facile justifications for evil in some cases, that don’t address the particulars of evil. This will not do if theism is to be rationally justified. It must account for many of the specifics of evil. This post shall lay them out.

The horrors that theism must explain

1 Have been going on for millions of years before humans were ever around!! The suffering of the dinosaurs, for example, is hard to make sense of on theism. Did the suffering of every dinosaur who was devoured by a T-Rex have a morally sufficient reason!?

2 Present no obvious reason for their existence. There’s no reasonable account of the goodness of any of the commonly expected evils—malaria, parasites, cancer, and other diseases. The project of charting out why all the evils are justified is not merely partially completed—it hasn’t been started at all.

3 Are clearly gratuitous. Surely there is no justification for babies getting cancer, making the world better overall as a result of this.

4 Stem from entities operating the way they were designed. Leon gives a list of examples

“The sea lamprey:

Leeches are disgusting creatures, no one’s arguing that. Now, imagine a three-foot-long leech that feeds on the blood of larger prey. Congratulations, you’ve imagined the sea lamprey, a primitive vertebrate that resembles an enormous leech. The sea lamprey is considered a pest in the Great Lakes of North America, because it often kills the fish it attaches itself to. The reason the lamprey is so nightmarish a killer is that its victims have no limbs to fight it off and must wait for their attacker to gorge itself with their blood.

The lancet fluke:

Dicrocoelium dendriticum is a tiny fluke that, in one stage of its life cycle, can be found in the bodies of certain species of ant. The infected ants are controlled by the parasite and during the night, they leave the anthill, climb up grass straws, and simply wait. This leads to them getting eaten accidentally by sheep and other herbivores, inside which the parasite can continue its life cycle. Strangely enough, the ant returns to the colony during the day and proceeds with its usual activities.

 The parasitic wasp:

Parasitic wasps are so horrifying and terrible that Charles Darwin used them as an argument against the existence of a benevolent God. To any of those amongst you that have seen Ridley Scott’s Alien movies. The wasps use a variety of host organisms, such as spiders, caterpillars, or the larvae of other insects. The prey is stung by the wasp, which lays its eggs in it. After the eggs hatch, the wasp larvae slowly consume the victim from inside out, leading to a slow, painful death. (Link to the examples here and above)

Not all natural teleological evil is predatory evil, however. A ready example can be found in the parasitic wasp just mentioned:

Once inside, those eggs "clone" themselves until the still-alive caterpillar is teeming with hundreds of larvae. Strangely, about 50 of the females emerge with large jaws and no reproductive organs. Their sole purpose for living? To devour as many of their brothers as they can, since only a few males are needed to fertilize their sisters.”

5 The evils must, according to theism, make the world overall better as a result of their existence. If they didn’t, God would intervene to prevent them. This means that their account has to not only explain the previous phenomena, but has to also explain why these evils which seem gratuitous are not only not gratuitous, but have a purpose so unique that an infinitely powerful, loving, and wise deity could find no other way of achieving their aim.

6 However, the evils also are things we should try to get rid of. Theists agree that it would be good to rid the world of malaria. Thus, these evils have to be such that preventing them is good, but it’s also good that they exist, such that a world without them would be worse. This must be true of all of the world’s evils.

7 The evils vary based on time and place. The further back in time one goes, the more evil there is. Thus, God must have a morally sufficient reason for more evil in the year 2000 bc than the year 2000 ce.

8 The evils aren’t proportional to anything. Many people experience evil that doesn’t cause them to develop or love God. Many good people experience horrific evils, and horrific people experience obvious goods. There is no reason why Hitler should have lived a generally happier life than the holocaust victims.

9 Despite the instances of gratuitous suffering, the world would be worse with a mechanism for filtering out gratuitous suffering. For example, we could imagine a mechanism resulting in beings who knew death was imminent no longer experiencing pain. This would avoid being fully conscious slowly succumbing to flames, or having their skin literally fall off as it melts under boiling water—as happened in a recent memorable instance of horrific abuse of power in a prison, or being brutally tortured to death by serial killers, who used sharp objects to take off limbs, fingers, and toes. Could God not allow us to avoid suffering during these instances of brutal misery?

10 There’s a conspicuous absence of gratuitous good. One could very easily imagine lots of ways of bringing about lots of good experience. Examples include

Making happy experiences produce 1000 times more happiness

Making atoms sentient and always very happy

Making experiences associated with virtue or wisdom produce more happiness.

Creating a universal feeling of immense euphoria when reading the bible.

11 The evils are often claimed to produce some greater good like soul building. It is a curious fact that these evils are randomly distributed, and often seem to undermine that purpose. For example, dementia seems to make it harder to have productive soul building as does death. Evils often occur as a result of people trying to do good and failing, such as medical errors that occur when people try to help others, antibiotic resistance, nuclear weapons that we discovered through development of other knowledge, and people who accidentally kill their babies. If evils served a purpose, then it would be a curious fact that these evils often seem to counteract many of the goals that they are trying to serve!

12 We also lack moral knowledge, often doing evils by accident. Given moral disagreement, we can’t all be right. Thus, God must have a reason for making us systematically deceived about morality—so deceived that many turn away from him, unable to understand his purpose for allowing evil.

13 Many of the evils that people do are a result of facts about them outside our control. While the person who brutally tortures and kills other people is acting on their will, if they had the common reaction that most of us had to torture—namely one of disgust and horror—they would not brutally torture people. Thus, theism has to explain why particular people would be given certain non willed properties that increase the probability of them committing horrific atrocities like rape, torture, child molestation, and murder. Why not just make all people revulsed by the idea of molesting children!?

14 While the jury is still very much out, it is not outside the realm of possibility that there is more total suffering than pleasure in nature!! This has been argued persuasively by Horta, Tomasik, and others. Thus, theism has to account not merely for minimal evils, but for arguably greater suffering than well-being in nature.

15 All of these evils must be unable to implicate God’s perfection. Theists would surely say that God experiences value—as the conduit of value itself. However, God does not sin. If God has free will then that means that a being who would never do evil can have free will!! So the account has to provide for how a perfect being would have free will and immense value in their life, in a way that would be impossible for created beings. Why is this?? It’s not at all clear.

16 All of the purposes of God’s allowing evil have to fail to rule out the goodness of heaven.

Let’s take a look at common theodicies

Skeptical theism can’t explain any of the 16 ones very well—each cut the probability of theism.

Soul building fails all of them.

Free will fails all of them.

So here is the data from evil that theism needs to explain. I look forward to see how theists are able to explain the data of evil. I suspect attempts will not succeed.