Why There's Evil

If there's a God

1 Introduction

Evil is by far the most difficult challenge for a theist. Most of the objections to theism are bunk—the supposed conflict between science and religion, the paradox of omnipotence, and various others—but evil is quite problematic. I’ve been puzzled about evil for a while, but I think I now have a pretty good theodicy that can nicely explain the phenomenon of evil and many of the features of the world that are puzzling. I’ll present the theodicy, address objections, and then show how it can be helpful as part of a broader theistic project.

I think this is an extremely powerful theodicy. I claim that there is almost no fact that favors naturalism over theism + the theodicy. It nicely explains various other worries that avail various theodicies.

2 The theodicy explained

The basic idea of the theodicy is as follows: God places us in an indifferent universe that resembles the typical indifferent universe where we are capable of understanding the broad features of the world. An indifferent universe is one with features that are not themselves affected by the value of the world. Just as naturalism predicts evil by the hypothesis of indifference, by saying the universe doesn’t care about us, this theodicy says God would put us (for some time) in a universe that doesn’t care about us.

Note, on such a picture, we won’t always be in an indifferent universe. We will one day be in heaven and things will be very good. But the theodicy claims that there is something valuable about our temporary stay in an indifferent world.

Because it incorporates the hypothesis of indifference, it explains evil precisely as well as naturalism does. It says that God puts us in an indifferent universe, so the evils that you’d expect are exactly those that you’d expect on theism. For this reason, evil does not favor naturalism over theism + this theodicy.

Why would God do such a thing? Why would he put us in an indifferent universe? I think most of what is said in defense of traditional theodicies can be said here. I will list 6 candidates.

1. There might be various unknown reasons. Perhaps putting us in a universe like this is valuable because it is required for various hard-to-guess afterlife goods. Perhaps there’s some consequential decision that we’ll make in 5 quadrillion years that God knows will be positively shaped by us being in an indifferent universe. Given that we only witness 70 years of our lives or so, we’re not in a position to guess whether there are such great afterlife goods. This theodicy also avoids the problems with skeptical theism, because it only requires positing an unknown reason for one thing—making an indifferent universe. But surely thinking that God has some unknown reasons to do one particular act doesn’t produce global skepticism or any of the other untenable results of skeptical theism—we already know that we’re wrong sometimes!

2. Perhaps being in an indifferent world, one whose features resemble the typical godless world that contains us and where we can know about the broad features of the world, strengthens our relationship with God. To consider an analogy: your relationship with your eventual spouse might be strengthened by the fact that you spent time without them. Having time without someone might strengthen your relationship with them. Similarly, time spent in a world apart from God might strengthen one’s eventual relationship with God, a relationship that is of infinite value.

3. Perhaps struggling through an indifferent world, not being micromanaged by God, is uniquely valuable for soul-building. Just going through a narrowly tailored set of challenges doesn’t give one the knowledge that they can overcome hardships in the same way that overcoming a random suite of challenges does. The benefits of soul-building, as of the other benefits on this list, last forever.

4. Perhaps being in an indifferent world builds our connections with others. An indifferent world might do this in at least three ways, relative to one where God intervenes. First, the fact that our lives have some element of randomness, where everything isn’t set by God makes it so that our relationships may be more valuable. God designing the world specifically to be such that specific people form maximally valuable relationships might rob the relationships of some of their value, in a way akin to arranged marriage. Second, as Robin Collins notes, going through hardships together, helping people out through hardship, and forgiving others through wrongdoing strengthens people’s relationships. An indifferent universe offers the chance for all of this. Finally, were we to be in a relationship with God, it might be infinitely more intense and thus crowd out our other relationships. Thus, just as there might be something valuable about a person making close friends before they get married, because a marriage crowds out their friend-making ability, the same might be true of us and God. This also seems to preclude God specifically intervening to maximize connection building. This is worth all the world’s evils, because the value of relationships lasts forever into the afterlife.

5. There might be something valuable about us working to better the world alongside God or, more broadly, working with God to achieve things. But, as Collins notes, that requires God to be in some way apart from the problems of the world, so that we truly work with him, rather than him constructing sham problems that we together work to solve. For A and B to work together to solve problem C in a valuable way, plausibly neither A nor B has to be fully in control of all the workings of C.

6. As Van Inwagen suggests, it’s valuable for us to freely choose God. But that requires that we be apart from God in some broad sense, and have the opportunity to choose him. That requires that he’s not ordaining the goings-on in our world. But that means that our world would be expected to look like a typical Godless world, except in the ways required for us to understand God’s nature, the nature of the world, and for us to exist at all.

I think most other commonly used theodicies can be integrated into this framework, but these hopefully set out the broad motivation for the theodicy. This theodicy can explain the presence of evil in our world, as well as hiddenness and various blemishes and imperfections. By predicting God wants to equip us with the faculties to discover the broad contours of our world, it predicts the world’s finely-tuned discoverability, the widespread sense of God, moral+modal+mathematical knowledge, psychophysical harmony, fine-tuning, and so on. It has the advantages of both theism and atheism, predicting indifference, excepting that we would exist and have scientific and moral knowledge.

3 Four problems for theodicies that this one avoids

There are 4 problems for most theodicies that this one nicely avoids.

First, if there are so many bad things, why doesn’t God intervene? Why does God not stop the holocaust, slavery, and various other bad things? Why doesn’t he intervene in small and subtle ways, like preventing COVID from jumping from bats to humans? Surely there are some ways he could do it that would be good. This theodicy explains it: God wants to place us in an indifferent universe, which entails that he not intervene, except in very small and rare ways, at most, and ways needed for us to have knowledge of the broad contours of the world.

Second, many theodicies undercut moral action. Normally, we intuit that if a person is in great agony, you should prevent her from being in agony. But if agony is good for soul-building and such, then it’s hard to see why you should do that. This theodicy answers: the valuable thing is a world broadly like ours, not any particular bad thing. As a result, it doesn’t undercut your moral reasons to act and prevent bad things. In addition, if the great goods of this life surround building our connections with others, then helping out others is a good way to do this (credit to Collins for this insight).

Third, it’s hard to see why there aren’t more diverse goods. To the best of my knowledge, no one has had the beatific vision on Earth. But why? Surely that would be best for some people’s moral and spiritual development. My theodicy explains this: in this life, God is not optimizing for everything about the world.

Fourth, even if a theodicy can explain various evils, it poorly predicts them. The world has many great evils that are naturally predicted on the hypothesis of indifference. If one’s a skeptical theist, for instance, while no evil is that surprising, it’s unlikely that all of the world’s evils would be ones that the hypothesis of indifference naturally predicts, just like someone who doesn’t know how to play chess shouldn’t be able to make predictions about what sorts of moves Magnus Carlsen would make. My theodicy again solves this problem by incorporating the hypothesis of indifference!

4 Objections

There are a few different objections one could raise against the theodicy. However, I’m skeptical that there are any objections that are two fatal for two reasons. First, because the theodicy + theism explains things so well, you would, in my view, have to be very certain of some objection to think the theodicy doesn’t work, just like you’d need extremely compelling reasons to abandon evolution by natural selection!

Second, there are many different purported reasons for God to place us in an indifferent universe. Thus, even if one successfully objects to some of them, the argument can work. In particular, it would be hard to see how one could be overwhelmingly confident that there aren’t unknown reasons to place us in such a world.

A first objection is that the various goods I talk about aren’t worth all the suffering. Could soul-building or relationships really be worth a child being tortured to death? This objection, while emotionally compelling, is not, I think correct. Every victim of every hardship on Earth will be infinitely compensated in the afterlife. Furthermore, because the goods I describe last forever, they’re worth any finite suffering.

Second, you might think there are other better ways of achieving the aims. For example, perhaps God could design a world optimal for soul-building or connection-building. However, if the arguments I have are convincing, then this world is ideal for certain types of connection-building, which hardship is required for. Perhaps God puts us in other conditions in the afterlife, also good for connection-building! But the reasons I described point to great goods of the types of experiences had on Earth.

In particular, parroting a point from Collins, each of the goods I discuss are unique. The good of having the experience of living apart from God and then voluntarily entering a relationship with God is not experiencable in any other way—similarly, the good of helping others through great suffering can’t be had absent suffering. That’s a unique positive contributor to a relationship, so it justifies giving us lives of suffering and spiritual error, so that we can help each other.

Third, you might think that there’s only a contingent connection between our world and those experiences. For example, while it might be good to spend some type apart from a spouse before entering a relationship, that’s only because it fosters a great sense of connection between spouses, which God could foster in other ways.

However, many of the goods aren’t like this. It seems like a relationship where both parties helped each other out through great suffering is intrinsically better than one where they didn’t. Furthermore, it’s not implausible that a person having spent time apart from another before entering a relationship with them is intrinsically valuable in enhancing the quality of the relationship. There’s something deficient about arranged marriages, for instance. God allowing us to choose him voluntarily strengthens the quality of the relationship. It might, similarly, be valuable for one to not merely have the intellectual knowledge of what things are like without God, but to have actually experienced it.

Here’s an analogy that helps see the point about connection-building—it seems intuitively, to those who have watched Titanic, that Jack and Rose’s afterlife relationship is better in part because of their time apart and shared struggles. Achieving their fondness for each other in other ways—having God make them just really like each other—wouldn’t seem as valuable.

Fourth, if you’re a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or some other religion, you might worry that this theodicy leaves us unable to account for the intervention of God in the natural world. Why does God become incarnate, for instance, if he’s apart from the world? Well, remember, the theodicy entails that God is willing to intervene to give us knowledge of the broad contours of the world—that would include informing us of his existence. Thus, the incarnation or other miracles make sense if done in pursuit of helping us understand broadly how to live and what God’s nature is. In fact, this naturally explains why God intervenes in religious contexts but not to, say, drop a heavy object on Hitler’s head!

Fifth, you might worry that God could create a better indifferent universe. But this misses the point: the claim is that a world is especially valuable if God doesn’t meddle too much. If God picks out the best kind of universe, that would undercut the various goods by being objectionable meddling, just like the value of one having not been in a relationship with their spouse and then entered it later would be undercut by their spouse operating behind the scenes, playing a very active role in their life. The idea of this theodicy is that God either randomly selects an indifferent universe or uses some process where he doesn’t pick the good outcomes in advance (perhaps—and this might be scandalous to some—he temporarily takes away his omniscience in order to make such a choice (this isn’t that scandalous—Christians think his human nature isn’t omniscient, maybe the son’s human nature made the decision of how to make the world so as to preserve the element of randomness and non-intervention)).

5 How the theodicy decimates the case for atheism

I think this theodicy can help undercut all of the evidence for atheism. This makes it attractive as a single, unified explanation of all the evidence for atheism. To see this, let’s take Jeff Lowder’s case for atheism as an example of a strong case for naturalism. In his opening statement, he explained how to do probabilistic reasoning and argued theism has a lower prior than naturalism—this theodicy obviously doesn’t affect that claim (though it is false). But it explains all the rest of his evidence.

Lowder points to various facts that allegedly support naturalism: the existence of physical reality, the success of science without invoking theistic explanations, evolution, the biological role of pleasure and pain, mind-brain dependence, moral handicaps, and nonresistent nonbelief. But this theodicy explains all of that: an indifferent universe that is made to resemble a typical Godless universe will have physical reality, nonubiquitous supernatural explanations, evolution, a biological role of pleasure and pain, and so on. Thus, against this theodicy, naturalism has no explanatory advantage and significant explanatory deficits.

This can also help rebut the charge that theistic explanations of various phenomena understate the evidence. One can always, in response to claims that theism explains various things, argue that this understates the evidence, because those things are deficient in some way. For instance, in response to the moral knowledge argument, one can point out the many ways in which our moral knowledge is deficient. But if one has a unified explanation of this failing, then theism + the hypothesis of indifference doesn’t understate the evidence at all, relative to naturalism.

For instance, in the book God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence, Robin Collins argues the fine-tuning, beauty, and discoverability of the universe all point to God. Draper replies to this by arguing he understates the evidence on a variety of fronts. For instance, in response to fine-tuning for intelligent life, Draper notes that theism predicts beings much more impressive than us in both moral character and intellectual ability. But if we are going to develop in a normal, indifferent way, then we can’t be especially impressive.

In response to fine-tuning for discoverability, Draper notes the ways that the universe is non-discoverable. But while this is true, these fall out of a typical indifferent universe! Us having, for instance, paranormal scientific powers is wholly incompatible with a broadly indifferent universe!

This is a nice feature of the theodicy. When people claim that theism understates the evidence with regard to some phenomenon, this theodicy nicely avoids that worry.

6 Conclusion

Evil is the problem I’ve struggled with the most for theism. I think it is the best argument for atheism by quite a significant margin! Nonetheless, while I think it is a real challenge, I think it is not insurmountable, given the considerable evidence for theism. This theodicy can solve the problem of evil, the supposed understated evidence with regard to various theistic pieces of data, and undermines most of the rest of the atheistic evidence, all without getting rid of theism’s ability to explain any data. It also avoids several major problems for other theodicies.

I don’t know if this theodicy is exactly right. But I think it’s at least in the vicinity of the correct theodicy. The correct theodicy will be somewhat like this—mystery dissolving in this important sense—and providing a coherent, unified picture of reality.

With this theodicy in hand, I think the prospects for atheism are rather dim. Theism + this theodicy explains the world so much better than atheism that it’s hard to see what justification one has for atheism over this theodicy, even if one has some major doubts about its success.