Christianity and the Problem of Evil

Problem of evil is a troubling area for Christian theology.  While some Christians choose to let faith get around the problems of evil, others simply cannot get past them.  Theodicy is a Christian theological construct developed to vindicate Christian God, developed as the defense of Christian God's goodness and omnipotence in the presence of evil.  

Let us look into the problem of evil and why Christian answers are inadequate.

Christian God is characterized in Christian theology as Omnipotent (all-powerful), Omniscient (all-knowing), and Perfectly Good (morally perfect).

The argument of the problem of evil facing Christianity is as follows: 

1. Christian God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2. If Christian God is omnipotent, then Christian God has the power to eliminate all evil
3. If Christian God is omniscient, then Christian God knows when evil exists.
4. If Christian God is morally perfect, then Christian God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. If evil exists and Christian God exists, then either Christian God doesn't have the power to eliminate all evil or doesn't know that evil exists or doesn't want to remove evil.
7. Therefore, Christian God does not exist.

Perhaps the thorniest issue in Christian apologetics is the problem of evil.  Thomas Aquinas, and Augustine before him, in his early thought, held that evil is not an entity but a deprivation or absence of good. But to this the opponent of Christianity may reply, “Well, granted all the suffering involved in those deprivations, an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God wouldn’t have allowed the deprivation any more than He’d have allowed a positive existent that was evil.” 

If there is no Christian God then humans are to blame for what is "evil and nasty," and not god; it is humans that are evil and nasty because they CHOOSE to be evil and nasty--not because they were born that way. Having a god therefore, allows them to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions. However, this is exactly what needs to be avoided--humans NEED to take responsibility for what they do. If humans were taught to take responsibility for their own actions, they would have more of a tendency to do right.  There would no longer be the problem of evil.

Free will argument:  

A favorite Christian apologetic response is the free will.  C.S. Lewis argued that, if God intervened and corrected every evil, then human action is no longer determined by free will.  Taken to a logical extreme, even evil thoughts should be impossible.  Free will is no longer free because even cerebral matter refuses to cooperate the process of free will.

Failure of free will argument:  

The most common solution we hear for the problem of evil is a simple reference to man's free will.  We hear such statements as, “Evil came into the world by man's free will.  Man is the author of sin, not Christian God.”

Christians use that argument because that statement squares with the biblical account of the origin of sin.  Christian God created man with free will and that man freely chose to sin.  It was not the Christian God who committed sin but the man.  But where did man ever gain the slightest inclination to sin?  

Christians have no disagreement that man is basically of a sinful nature.  Nothwithstanding their sinful nature, they are all qualified to achieve salvation by the grace of Jesus.

Romans 3:23-24

 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

If man was created with a desire for and ability to sin, then a shadow is cast on the integrity of the Christian God, the creator.  If he was created with no desire for sin, then we must ask where that desire came from. The Bible tells us that we sin because we are sinners.  We were born with sinful nature.  We are fallen creatures.  

Perhaps the single biggest weakness of the "we are helpless sinners" argument is that it completely denounces all accountability to harm caused to others, it shows no concern for the victim.  If a rapist exercises his free will, does the free will of the victim to not be raped matter, even be more paramount?  

The argument of free will conflates the desire arising from free will with the action that follows.  In opposing the free will argument, we are not becoming proponents of thought police.  Where is tye rational thought that calls for restraint and ethical behavior?

There are five reasons why the defense of free will is inadequate:

1. Adam and Eve were not created fallen.  They did not have sinful nature.  They were good creatures with a free will.  Yet they chose to sin.  Why did Christian God make Adam and Eve, who were not born with a sinful nature, to have the ability for sinful thoughts and actions? As creatures with free will, it does not follow that humans should be able to sin.  Humans have limited abilities, and as the creator, Christian God had decided what he will not be able to do.  Thus, as the designer, Christian God already had made some choices on what humans would not be capable of doing.  Christian God had a choice in choosing what humans are capable of and not capable of.  Christian God has designed man with limited capabilities - so that he is incapable of doing some things.  This apparently did not restrict the human free will.  Why could not the Christian God design man to be incapable of sinning without restricting his free will?
2. If God created humans with a neutral nature, such that his nature did not guarantee a tendency towards evil, at least some humans would be sin-free.  What kind of free will is it that humans cannot choose to be sin-free but only to choose to be sinful?  It does not necessarily follow that free will should always lead to sin.  The only reason humans have sinful nature then is that God made them so.  Bible states that no human being can avoid committing sin.
3. Not all suffering comes from one's own free will choices.  Natives suffered brutally in the hands of colonialists.  Who is the perpetrator of evil?  Who suffered?  Perpetrators of evil prevailed and flourished.  Where is God's justice if his final judgment ignores and forgives the colonialists of all their free willed sinful actions just because they have faith in him at the time of their death?  
4. In the many biblical stories of God's intervention in human matters, God always took one side and punished those on the other side.  In the powerful movie God on Trial (2008), the end argument is indeed thought provoking: Yahweh in the Old Testament cannot be seen as good based on the morality instilled in our hearts.  All that one can say is that he was on the side of Jews.  How else can one see the Biblical God who calls for the death of EVERY first born child in Egypt (Exodus 11:5)?  It was not human free will that caused the indiscriminate suffering and death of all the first born in Egypt.  It was Christian God's free will.  And it was NOT good.
5. A final argument would be that Christian God did not make humans sinful.  Humans became sinful because Adam and Eve, their ancestors, did a sinful act.  Humans simply inherited the sinful nature from their ancestors.  Can Christian God be held guilty of acts of evil committed by man? The affirmative answer follows from omnipotent Christian God's choice of focusing on the transmission mechanism of the effects of the sinful choice of Adam and Eve.  Does that make any reasonable sense that humans are sinners even before they are born simply because their ancestors did something sinful?  Does this decision of Christian God to make all humans inherit the sin not impinge on the human free will?  

Ayn Rand says it best in her book For the New Intellectual. (1961, pages 136-137):

"A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code. Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a 'tendency' to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free." 

Argument of Christian God's Inscrutable Nature:    

In order to challenge the argument for the problem of evil (stated above), the only recourse is to dispute one of the 6 premises.  One could argue that premise 4 is false, namely that a morally perfect Christian God has the desire to eliminate all evil.  Bible tells us that it is simply not so.  For example, Genesis 50:20, Acts 2:22-23.

The Christian defense says, in essence, that Christian God's actions, no matter what they are, cannot be questioned.  Why?  Because, Christian God’s actions are inscrutable to humans.  The Christian defense is that Christian God plans lawlessness, to use the language we find in Acts, he plans evil in order to accomplish his good-and-perfect-ends and that he does so in a way that leaves him without any guilt or blame.  The Christian God's choicy means for his actions can be justified simply by pointing to Christian God's inscrutable nature - we humans cannot figure out all things that Christian God does and hence we cannot judge him.

The argument in the defense of Christian God's "inscrutable nature" goes as follows: 

It is not simply evil but pointless and irredeemable evil, which would be incompatible with the character of God as Christians conceive him.  Hence the critic who claims to demonstrate an inconsistency in theism has to show that there would be no way of justifying the evil in the world.  It is important to notice that in this dispute the onus of proof is upon the critic of theism; for he has undertaken the stringent task of demonstrating an inconsistency in the theist's case.  It is, therefore, not enough for him to cast some doubt on the ways in which theists have sought to deal with this problem; he has to show that it is logically impossible that Christian God should have a morally-sufficient reason to allow evil of the sort we encounter in the world.

Failure of the argument of Christian God's inscrutable nature:

Sure.  We can take this challenge.  But to decide whether an act of Christian God is irredeemably evil or not, we have to use neutral ethical reasoning.  If all that a Christian has to know about God's actions is the Bible, then we have to look for justification within the scope of Bible.  If the justification is not explicitly found within the scope of the Bible, then the best explanation has to follow reasoning.

Firstly, the one adducing the theology should explain rationally based on theological foundations.  Trying to say that God's actions cannot be explained is simply saying that one does not have an answer.  In that case, there is no further argument.

Secondly, evils in the Bible have to be evaluated per ethical standards that we use in all matters.  Using Yahweh's own morals in the Bible to justify evil actions of Yahweh is far from satisfactory - it is committing the fallacy of authority.  For a rational person raising the argument, assumption that the bible is divine and hence cannot be questioned is not only unnecessary but is the very assumption that is being challenged. 

Third, saying that "we limited humans do not know" is not a defense for Yahweh's evil actions in the Bible.  It is a failure to defend.

The last straw...

Christian apologists resort to the moral argument for existence of Christian God by arguing that evil and good exist only if Christian God does.  Otherwise, they become arbitrary.

Ravi Zacharias and William Lane Craig argue for the existence of God as a necessity for morality (evil vs. good dichotomy) to exist.  Without God, the moral law giver, there cannot be objective or absolute morals they argue.  Since they also define God as perfection of goodness, therefore, there is no question of attributing any evil to him.  By definition, evil stays outside God.  Of course, they are silent whether this abstract notion of God that they argue for can ever be the Biblical God.  Can that abstract omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect God be the same Biblical God who took sides, called for the killing of ALL innocent first-born, and women in a genocidal rage against Canaanites?

Don't hold your breath for clarity.  They will never distinguish between the abstract notion of God with no-attributes and Yahweh, the Biblical God.  It serves their argument, but therein lays the real and complete failure of all their arguments.