Evil and Suffering

Acts committed by human beings such as murder, theft and rape. It includes evil that comes from human inaction. It arises from human choices and intentions.
E.g. Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide.

What the world does to us through disease, starvation, storms, flood etc. It is produced by the chance of operation of the laws of nature rather than human intentions.
E.g. 2008 Sichuan earthquake killed 70,000 people and left 5 million homeless. Mass extinctions elimated 90% of marine species.

The mental or physical pain, hardship or distress brought about by both moral and natural evil.
Natural evil causes physical suffering through injury and death.

The Book of Genesis presents the story of Adam and Eve, showing how the first humans brought moral evil by disobeying God. They were punished by the Flood, a form of natural evil.
Many do not interpret these stories literally and view it as myths.

St Paul argues evil can be overcome through faith in Jesus. By having faith, God counts believers as members of God’s kingdom.
Jesus performed miracles over natural evil such as healing diseases, calming the wind and sea and conquering death.
The Bible explains evil through Satan’s influence. The Book of Revelation identifies Satan as the Serpent who tempts Eve. God allows the Devil to influence the world because of free will.

1. God is omnipotent.
2. God is omnibenevolent.
3. Evil exists.
Three statements containing a logical contradiction. An all-powerful God could remove evil, and all-loving God would want to remove evil, yet evil exists.

If God lacks omnipotence, he cannot control evil and bears no blame for its existence. This is Process Theology’s solution - evil is a process within matter beyond God’s direct control.
However for most believers a non-omnipotent God would not be worthy of worship.

Belief in God’s goodness and love supports those experiencing evil and forms the basis for hope in heaven.
Freud might argue this represents wish-fulfilment - there is no all-loving God, only the desire for one.

Augustine proposed evil is privation bono - a privation of good exists. Evil is an abscence of good just as darkness is an absence of light.

1. Evil that is overwhelming in quantity and quality.
2. Evil that is pointless.

The Permian-Triassic extinction
- The Great Dying occurred 251-252 million years ago which eliminated 90% of marine and species and 79% of land species through natural disasters including an asteroid strike.
Evolution may be self-running, but as a natural process governed by laws of nature, why did God not program those laws to be less destructive. Surely cruelty to species is wrong?

The Suffering of an Innocent Child
A five-year-old girl was hated by her parents who beat her, thrashed her and kicked her until she was covered in the bruises. She was locked in the cold cellar all night and smeared with excrement.

Rowe’s Fawn
The fawn is trapped in a fire and becomes horribly burned and lies in agony for several days before death.
It suffers and dies alone so no humans know about it. No eventual good comes from it and neither preserves human free will nor builds human character by developing virtues like sympathy.

God is omniscient and an omniscient being would know at the point of creation that both overwhelming and pointless evil would occur. E.g. Mass extinctions, Holocaust, Rowe’s Fawn and cruel treatment of children.
Why, then, did God create the universe?

Animal suffering - Where is God’s love for all of his creation?
Atonement for children’s suffering - Any atonement for the suffering of innocent children.

Medical benefits - Parents allow children the pain of injections due to immunisation of harmful diseases to avoid greater problems.
Learning from mistakes
Developing virtue - suffering brings compassion, sympathy etc.

An attempt to explain why God allows evil and suffering in the world. It argues that God has given up control over human actions in order to bring about a greater good. By giving humans free will, they can make their own actions and responsible for their own actions. This allows humans to develop virtues such as compassion, courage, patience etc, Moral evil is the price of free will.

Free will necessarily leads to moral evil it is not possible to have free will without moral evil in the world.
The results of having free will are worth the price of the suffering it causes.

Free will is not enough for moral development. We must be placed in situations that require us to make decisions and learn about the consequences. We experience pain and see others experiencing pain, which gives us the opportunity to develop positive qualities. Pain acts as the stimulus for development, However, we choose to develop negative qualities too.

1. The permission to do evil.
2. The ability to do evil.
3. The opportunity to do evil.

An atheist who aimed to show the Free Will Defence fails. He wrote a book called The Miracles of Theism, which ironically presented one of the clearest versions of the Free Wi