I had a conversation last week with a friend about the problem of evil. Specifically, the conversation revolved around the fact that the reality of evil represents an authentic challenge to belief in God. The short version of the problem, with which most people are familiar already, is that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of an all good, all power, all knowing God; such a God would know evil exists, would want evil not to exist, and would have the ability to eliminate it, and therefore, since evil does exist, such a God must not.
While I think this problem is a valid reason for atheism, I do not think it compels atheism.
What I told my friend, which I’d like to revise a little, is that atheism doesn’t resolve the problem of evil, but rather dissolves it. Since “evil” is a moral judgment, it presupposes an objective moral standard of goodness from which it deviates, and since an objective Good is what is meant (in part) by the word “God,” denying that God exists entails denying that evil exists.
In other words, the problem of evil is a problem within faith, and not outside of it. For this reason, a person with a firm conviction that there’s something radically wrong with the world could just as easily reason that there really is a Good that validates our judgments against the present state of affairs. From within faith, the problem is agonizing, but it’s only in that agony that we are free to confront the reality that evil really is a problem.
I stand by all of that. So here’s my slight revision, offered in a particularly Christian key:
Those who believe in God must take up as a cross the problem of evil. Denial of the existence of God because of evil is finally a spiritual decision, a judgment that the seeming contradiction at the heart of faith, that God asks us to suffer a cross, is intolerable. Atheism because of evil is a way of saying that this particular cross is unbearable—and I think those of us who do believe must be honest about the fact that we are indeed carrying a cross, and among the things that can be said when one is crucified is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
I don’t believe any theological or philosophical argument can resolve this problem for the believer. My reading of Saint Paul is that there will be an eschatological defeat of evil, and that its defeat will be so great that evil can’t be compared to it. I would also observe that this eschatological hope does not involve saying that evil wasn’t all that evil after all, since it all ended well; I believe God will bring good from evil, and central to that good is a judgment against all the evils we have suffered and inflicted.
"The problem of evil exists within faith." Yes. This is why I have often had such a difficult time writing about the PoE--something, as you know, I am very interested in!--for a mostly secular audience...appreciate this post -- thanks for sharing!
Asking why there is evil when there is God is like asking why there are saplings when God must desire full grown trees or why there are children when God intends us to be complete and mature.
Evil is a lack. Sin is a deficiency(of faith not of moral virtue). Faith, the one true opposite of evil/sin, does not come forth fully grown any more than a tree does, and yet we don't find the existence of seeds to be an argument for atheism. Men are simply not born able to believe in the full and complete goodness of God and His love for us, that takes living in the shadow of the Cross. Ultimately the Problem of Evil is the Problem of Time, why does God piddle around with this growth and change business when surely He must desire the consummation of all things? I don't agree with Aquinas about a lot of things but 'Every existence as such is a good.' and once we see evil as a lack of faith, an inability to trust, I think that it sorta falls into place.