The problem of evil is as old as the doctrine of God’s omni-benevolence. It poses the following question: “How can God be perfectly good if our world is so full of evil?” It’s a central topic of religious doubt, and a fair amount of ink has been spilled over it thus far.
I will revisit this problem by presenting my own version of the puzzle. Suppose an angel visits you in a dream and gives you a prophecy. This angel tells you that if you conceive a child, then that child will become a mass murderer. The only way to prevent this from happening is to avoid conceiving the child. Also suppose that you believe the angel and, given this, you know with full certainty what the angel said is true.
If you chose to have the child anyway, would you be responsible for the murders the child will commit? The natural inclination is to say that yes, you would be responsible. You knew that conceiving the child would lead to that child committing murders. In effect, conceiving the child caused those murders, and your foreknowledge pins both causality and moral responsibility on your head.
How, then, could God be blameless for the state of the world? According to common definition, God is all-knowing. No matter how he chose to create the world, he knew exactly how it would turn out with perfect certainty. If God is powerful enough to affect creation in any way he pleases, then he is directly responsible for all outcomes in the world, regardless of the existence or nonexistence of free will. Either you were determined to act as you would, or God simply knew how you would choose to act given certain circumstances.
If he had stacked things slightly differently, then the recent Asian tsunami wouldn’t have happened. Perhaps we could have avoided the Holocaust, or perhaps there could simply be one fewer brain tumor. Even better, he could have done a perfect job (as one might expect of a perfect god) and the world would be free of cruel and needless suffering.
The question then arises: how can God be both omni-benevolent and all-knowing? Knowing that evil would come into the world if he created the world as he did, how can he be perfectly good? The only way to resolve the contradiction is to claim that the world is as good as it could be. However, we all know this claim is false. For instance, the world would be a better place with just one fewer fatal car accident, or if a cancer patient felt just a little bit less pain just before inevitable, tragic death.
The simple answer is that God cannot be both omni-benevolent and all-knowing. Given our world, it’s contradictory to suggest that he is both. It’s simply not enough to conclude that God works in mysterious ways, or that he is somehow “beyond logic.” Contradictions are impossible. Both claims cannot stand if they contradict one another; one or the other must be false.
A perfect god would be a rational god. He would stand in observance with the sense of rationality and intelligence that he gave to his creatures. Many claim that “high-minded intellectualism” stands in the way of proper faith and worship in God. Such an opinion is depressing — why wouldn’t God want his creations to exercise their full intelligence and ability?
If God is most perfect, then he must exist. Things that are logically impossible do not and cannot exist. Show me a god who can stand up to rational inquiry, and you will have shown me a god worthy of worship. I’ll be the first in line.
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