The Problem of Evil and the Three Properties of God

In Philosophy and Logic, the Problem of Evil is a challenge to the existence of God. Or rather it challenges the existence of a kind of God who is: Omniscient, Omnibenevolent, and Omnipotent. Let us begin by defining these three properties.

Firstly, a being is omniscient when she knows all there is to know. She knows every fact. Hence, she can know all states of reality and everything that has happened and will happen. Secondly, Omnibenevolence is when said being is all Good. She is Good, and her Goodness is opposed to Evil. Such a being will seek to destroy Evil whenever it appears. Thirdly, an Omnipotent being is one who can do anything. There is no way for such a being to will something and not be able to do it.

Many religions claim that God is all knowing, all Good and all Powerful so with the triple-O properties.

Now we present the problem of Evil:

(1)    There is evil in the world.

(2)    If a Triple-O propertied God were to exist, then there should be no evil in the world

(3)    Conclusion: There is no triple propertied God

There are many ways to challenge this argument. One of them is the “No Best Possible World Response” (NBPWR). To understand it, we must begin with an analogy. Let us suppose that you dear reader was to die and Stand in front of the All Mighty. Being a Philosopher who questioned his existence, he would condemn you to an eternity in purgatory. However, he gives you the option to spend a finite time in Heaven. It is up to you to choose this amount of time. You have to come up with a number of days for how long you will be there. A reasonable philosopher, without a vivid imagination, would come up with a huge number. Something with many Googles multiples and to the power of many Googles.

Let’s look at the world and consider how many configurations are possible. We can start with simple things: A world with no cheese to a world where cheese grows on trees. We might conclude that there are many ways to configure the world. Also, we are not sure which ones are better than others in most cases. For instance, would it be better not to have cheese and all the cholesterol related issues it causes? Or would it be better to have it grown on trees and not need such an elaborate process to farm cows and harvest their milk?

The NBPWR goes as follows: There an infinite number of configurations for which the world could have been made. Given that, there would be no way for God to come up with the “Best” configuration. Whatever he comes up with, there will always be a better configuration.

In our cheese example, this seems to be true. However, consider the example of war. A world where humans were ever more slightly geared not to want to harm one another, would arguably be a better world. Now, why didn’t a reasonable God who is infinitely wiser than human beings think of making such a world? Why didn’t she will such a world?

We can think of any number of examples where the Triple-O propertied God could have and should have done better by choosing from all possible worlds. Thus at this stage, this response leaves us unconvinced of his existence. It would be as if the Philosopher who died and stood in front of the all Mighty were to choose ten days to spend in heaven. He would be blamed for not trying to come up with a reasonable number of days to spend there.

However, if we were to try to steelman the response, we will need to add to it other challenges to the problem of Evil. Namely, the challenge of free will. Going back to our example of war, we would argue that they exist because of the free will of human beings. And thus when thinking of the best possible world, we shouldn’t think of a situation where God needs to maximize the Goodness in the world, but rather try to maximize it given constraints.

The same can be said about natural disasters. At first glance, they serve no Good purpose and are exempt from man’s free will. However, a world which operates differently could be limited to how people might act freely. Nature with a whole purpose where nothing can ever go wrong, would provide evidence of the existence of an all-powerful designer and thus limit the freedom of someone not wanting to believe in such a designer.

With that said, the Steelman NBPWR still seems to lack something. We are left wondering when we face a huge disaster: “Why didn’t God will it away.” And as such, the argument falls short from refuting the problem of evil, even when accounting for human free will.

In summary, we have explained that the problem of evil comes down to the existence of evil as a challenge to the existence of a God that knows everything is all Good and is all powerful. We have assessed one possible challenge to this problem, that whatever world God would have created, there would always be a better possible configuration of the world. And we had found that given the sorry state of the world, the God of the Three properties would be blamed for not even trying when he created the world and thus left the reasonable agnostic unconvinced of his existence given the problem of Evil.