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Tuesday::Nov 05, 2024

The Problem of Evil

W

hat is the value of the Creation's laws being heeded? What is the value of the laws of physics?

In asking why God permits evil, we could be asking one of two things. 1) Why did God create a world in which such evil is even possible? or 2) Why does God not prevent the evil that is occurring in the world as it is? Question 1 is a more abstract question -- it is very difficult to envision what such a world would look like, and it would surely be very different from our own. At any rate, "having made a different world" would not save anyone in this world -- rather, they would never have existed in the first place. Question 1 therefore doesn't have a lot of rhetorical bite to it, existing so far in the hypothetical.

Question 2 is different. Question 2 really seems to be asking "Why is God not performing constant miracles to prevent evil and suffering from taking place?" That is, as much as we protest against bad things happening to good people, and vice versa, I think most people have the sense that the causes of suffering and evil are, at least to some extent, natural in our universe. We understand why greed exists, we understand why natural disasters occur, we can see how mistakes naturally get made, we understand why predators hunt prey, and so on and so forth. To ask God to prevent these things seems to be asking him to consistently and frequently tamper with the laws of His own Creation; turning aside lightning bolts, curing cancers, bestowing luck, shielding innocents from bullets, and so on and so forth.

There is a common Epicurean refrain in arguments concerning the problem of evil: "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?" What this argument does not take into account is the idea that a greater evil might be done specifically by preventing the evils to which we are subject. I propose that one possibility for such an evil is the consistency of physical laws themselves. I find it hard to believe that the Creator of the Universe has the moral obligation to sunder the working of his Creation every time a part of it might be wounded (see God's response to Job).

I take it that God can, and does, at times perform miracles. These wounds in the fabric of reality are clearly means to some great End that we have only a dim view of. But I am tempted to view them as wounds -- as lesser evils that God must perform on His works to accomplish His greater goals. I think it boorish to insist that He, at every moment, ought to further damage His world for our sakes. He has already done so much.

I don't believe this to be a "resolution" of the problem of evil, but it's an aspect I don't hear remarked upon often.