Young woman having a headache

The Greek philosopher Epicurus said, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.  Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” A question has been asked by many, “If God is so powerful and so good, how come evil exists?”

How can an all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), all-good (omnibenevolent), all-present (omnipresent) God exist yet evil exists? There are two categories of people who would raise this question or a version of this question, the first group would be the believers, Christians and the second group would be those opposed to religion, atheists, agnostics etc.

First, lets address those opposed to religion. Before you complain about the existence of objective evil, you have to have a definition of objective good and objective evil. To a world where no God exists, good and evil don’t exist, think about it, how would you conceptualize the idea of good and evil if you are for example an atheist? I asked one atheist to define good and evil and he told me that good is that which is generally acceptable in society and evil is that which is generally not acceptable in society. This definition doesn’t fly, in Nazi Germany, it was generally acceptable to kill Jews, was it good? absolutely not. Another atheist told me that good is that which benefits conscious beings and evil is that which harms conscious beings, and these conscious beings include animals. This definition doesn’t work either, why?  We kill animals (conscious beings) for food, skin and other utilities yet that is not considered evil unless you are a radical vegetarian, animals kill other animals to protect territories, for food etc., yet that is never considered evil. In an atheistic worldview good and evil are relative, nothing is objectively good and nothing is objectively evil so it would be hypocritical for anybody opposed to religion to complain about the existence of evil.

The other thing is, most people opposed to religion like to make the claim that if something is not backed up by empirical scientific data, they cannot accept it as part of reality; well, there is no scientific data backing up the concept of good or evil, science backs up the concept of pain, but pain doesn’t necessarily equal evil, so good and evil to those people doesn’t exist.

Think about it, humans are animals just like any other animal from an exclusively scientific perspective. Now if a human being kills another human being, that can’t be evil scientifically because that would be just like a lion killing a gazelle, or a gorilla killing another gorilla trying to invade its territory. A tsunami takes place, people are killed and others are swept into the ocean, that can’t really be evil scientifically, we eat fish, what is wrong with fish eating us when some of us get swept into the ocean during a tsunami? The tag-line for evolution is survival of the fittest, the strong survive at the expense of the weak, that’s science, I have a gun, I am strong, you don’t have a gun, you are weak, I kill you and take your money, survival of the fittest in action. Basically, to anybody opposed to religion good and evil don’t exist, meaning they have no justification for complaining about God allowing evil and whether or not that’s a good thing.

Now to the believers, there are several approaches: there is the free will argument. The argument would be that God gave us free will and he allows evil things to occur because he does not want to violate our free will, for example, a criminal wants to kill another person, if God stops him, he would violate his free will and God does not violate our free will, so he lets it happen.

This argument is bogus, it doesn’t work, what about natural phenomena like earthquakes? Whose free will is being upheld? If God answers prayers, then this argument falls apart, think about it, if my house has been broken into by robbers who have planned to kill me, then I pray for protection and God stops them and prevents them from killing me, he would have violated their free will wouldn’t he? And by the way free will as in autonomy doesn’t exist, free will means having the ability to chose between to or not to do something with an equal amount of ease, only God has that ability. Think about it, if for example you are asked to kill your mother, unless there is something wrong with your mind, you will easily choose not to kill your mother, it would be extremely difficult even impossible for you to chose to kill your mother. In fact the only way way you could kill your mother, is if your re forced to. That’s not free will.

The other argument is the open theism argument. Here the claim is that God made himself not know the future, essentially denying the omniscience of God. The argument is that God is just as surprised when bad stuff happens as we are, he does not know the future so we can’t really blame him. This argument is flawed as well because, one, the bible clearly teaches the omniscience of God. Two, if God does not know the future, then he has lost control of his creation, why trust him or worship him, why pray to him, a god who is not omniscient is a weak god that is not worth of our worship. How does he know whether or not he will defeat the devil?

The other argument is the that God knows every possible decision we would make in every possible scenario, so he works things out without violating our free will ensuring we end up with the scenario that results in the best possible decision being made, basically he is trying the best he can. This argument has a few flaws, the main one being if God is trying the best he can, that means certain things are outside of his control, meaning he is not exactly sovereign and that’s not the Christian God. There are other arguments which are just as futile as the ones above.

You could forget all these futile rationalizations and like me admit that at the moment this is one of those areas that are beyond our comprehension. God’s intelligence is infinite, ours is finite. If you take your eight-month-old baby to be vaccinated, the baby’s intelligence level is too low to comprehend the significance of the injection, the baby will only be experiencing pain, to the baby, that’s evil. But to the adult whose intelligence level is higher, the painful vaccination is part of a process of attaining a greater good i.e. prevent dangerous diseases. We have finite intelligence, God has an infinite level of intelligence, his level of intelligence is clearly way higher than ours, he sees the bigger picture that we don’t and cannot see. The evil stuff might just be like the vaccine injection to the baby.