The Problem of Evil

In a Talk at Google in 2008, Dr. Tim Keller highlighted the fact that the philosophical dilemma of the Problem of Evil is a fairly recent phenomenon. Furthermore, the dilemma has effectively vanished from the academic world of conversation and now mostly continues to reside only in secular culture as an argument against the existence of God.

Here is the construction of the classical argument:

IF an all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good God exists, THEN evil would not.

BECAUSE evil clearly exists, it creates a direct logical contradiction, proving that such a God cannot logically exist.

It can sound convincing, even cogent as a philosophical argument, that is, if you accept the premises. The premises do not, however, hold up to criticism so the house of cards has fallen. Let’s investigate.

First, an all-powerful God, according to the argument, allow evil to exist. The insinuation is that God is not powerful enough to stop evil from existing. When one takes two steps back from this premises, they should recognize there is a huge dilemma for the skeptic. For them to realize all the different reasons God would have to have in order to allow evil to exist. To use a visual aid to help describe the point, the skeptic themself is not omniscient (all knowing/knowing all knowledge in the universe) so in this metaphor the skeptic is limited to the knowledge within a sandbox of knowledge. The skeptic is claiming a supernatural ability, however, to be in fact omniscient and (by definition of the premise) knowing all possible reasons God would allow evil to exist not only within their sandbox but also know all possible reasons even outside their sandbox of knowledge. That’s impossible for any human to have omniscience, therefore this premise’s wall supporting the argument’s structure falls down. To take this position is also incredibly arrogant to assume that because the skeptic cannot think of any possible ‘good reason’ for God to allow the presence of evil, there could not possibly be a good reason (it is also an argument from silence which is a logical fallacy).

Second, a perfectly good God, according to the argument, would not allow evil to exist. The insinuation is the God is not good because he has allowed evil to exist. There are two glaring issues at fault with the premise here. There is the dilemma for the skeptic to define what is ‘good.’ If the skeptic is arguing from the position of a secular materialist assumption that there is no objective absolute of ‘right & wrong’, then moral relativism prevails. The skeptic is having to borrow philosophical morality from biblical principles of ‘right & wrong’ to move their argument forward.

The skeptic could lean on the Reductio ad Absurdum argument (you temporarily accept your opponent’s premise to show that it leads to a logical contradiction, absurdity, or an unacceptable conclusion). C.S. Lewis masterfully illustrates the more significant point for the skeptic to recognize though. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that a human can judge a line to be crocked, a street to be twisting only if they know what a straight line looks like to compare it too. Lewis referred to this morality that humanity lives with every day in real life as the moral law (an objective standard given to us by a law Giver). In like manner, a skeptic cannot argue the God of the Bible is not good unless they have a standard to judge the claim by; and they do not.

Additionally, when this argument is in the context of trying to show the God of the Bible does not exist, the skeptic is completely negating one of the most powerful elements of Christianity: That Christ suffered. The entire Old Testament points to the approaching Christ, the entire New Testament illuminates the ministry of Christ’ life, His suffering on the Cross in pain & death, and then His resurrection from death itself on the third day. The message of the gospel is that God Himself came down from Heaven and took on the sins of mankind that for those who believe in Him would be saved. God did not need to come down from Heaven, take on Himself of the sin of mankind and the wrath of God; But God…did!

Third, “because evil clearly exists.” This is where the secular materialist has a profound issue of arguing against something they believe doesn’t even exist but is arguing it does exist: evil itself. This is a naturalist arguing that only natural causes can be accepted to conduct sound science and reasonable philosophy, that supernatural realms are merely fairy tales, but is now caught in the act arguing that the “fairy tale” is real. It’s like the mad man that argues with the wind, or the kettle calling the pot black (argument from hypocrisy).

25 years ago, when I first became a Christan, I remember reading about the dilemma of the problem of evil. I was unaware there was a powerful counterargument available and therefore felt as though it was a ‘checkmate’ conversation if/when a skeptic brought it up. Knowing there is a counterargument, that it is persuasive, powerful and ironically ends up pointing the argument towards the God of the Bible, not way from the possibility of the existence of God, helps me in my faith and I hope this is a help to you too.