The Problem of Evil: Eduqas A grade notes

Eduqas
Philosophy

For AO1 you need to know:

Moral & Natural evil
The logical problem of evil; Epicurus’ classical version & Mackie’s modern development
The evidential problem of evil: Rowe & G. S. Paul
Augustine’s theodicy
Irenaean type theodicy

For AO2 you need to be able to debate:

The extent to which the classical form of the problem of evil is a problem
The degree to which modern problem of evil arguments are effective in proving God’s non-existence.
Whether Augustinian type theodicies are relevant in the 21st century
The extent to which Augustine’s theodicy succeeds as a defence of the God of classical theism
Whether Irenaean type theodicies are relevant in the 21st century
The extent to which Irenaeus’stheodicy succeeds as a defence of the God of classical theism

AO1: Natural & moral evil

Natural evil is suffering caused by the workings of the natural world.
Examples focus on cases that are purposeless, intense, widespread, and avoidable if the world were different.
God is supposedly the designer of the natural world and could have made it differently or intervened to prevent suffering.
This is argued to make God responsible for natural evil, posing a problem for belief in God.
Hume points out that animals routinely endure hunger, injury, disease, fear, and death, with pain as the primary motivator for survival, though gentler signals might suffice.
Creatures also have weak, vulnerable bodies.
Nature subjects them to harsh extremes such as scarcity, climate fluctuations, disease, and disasters like earthquakes, floods, and storms.
Rowe gives the example of a fawn dying in a forest fire, which seems entirely pointless.
The fawn suffers intensely for days before dying, with no moral development or greater good arising from it.
This highlights how natural evil often involves prolonged suffering that serves no clear purpose.
Gregory S. Paul focuses on suffering built into the structure of the world.
For tens of thousands of years, huge numbers of children have died before they can develop morally, which he calls “the Holocaust of the Children”.
Historically, around 40–60% of children died before age five, through disease, malnutrition, and other natural causes.
These operate independently of human choice, making them clear examples of natural evil.
Moral evil is suffering caused by human actions, seen in wars and the Holocaust.
This also challenges belief in God, since God could intervene to prevent such actions.
While some argue this would conflict with free will, it is unclear why preventing extreme evils would undermine freedom generally.
For example, stopping the 9/11 hijackers would not seem to destroy human free will.
Some cases blur the distinction, such as natural disasters partly worsened by human-driven climate change.

AO1: the logical problem of evil

The logical problem of evil aims to show that the co-existence of evil and God is logically inconsistent.
Epicurus was an early developer of the argument.
He was not attacking the later Christian concept of an omnipotent creator, but arguing that any god both good and involved in the world would be incompatible with evil.
Epicurus presents the problem as a dilemma rather than a formal deductive argument.
A dilemma sets up limited options, each leading to an unacceptable conclusion:
“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?”
The final horn challenges whether a being lacking power and goodness counts as divine, supporting his rejection of an interventionist God.
However, Epicurus does not make explicit his assumptions, such as that a good being would eliminate evil wherever possible and that no sufficient reasons could justify it.
Mackie develops this into a more rigorous analytic form, making these assumptions explicit and presenting the problem as a formal inconsistency.
He aims to show a strict logical contradiction between evil and God’s attributes of omnipotence and omnibenevolence.
His argument is deductive, so if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true.
Mackie’s inconsistent triad:
P1. An omnipotent God has the power to eliminate evil.
P2. An omnibenevolent God has the motivation to eliminate evil.
C1. Evil, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence form an inconsistent triad such that God and evil cannot co-exist.
This argument is a priori, since it relies on analysing the concepts of ‘omnipotence’, ‘omnibenevolence’, and ‘evil’, rather than experience.
If a being has both the power and motivation to eliminate something, it is logically impossible for that thing to exist.
So if evil exists, it is impossible that such a God exists.
This is a strong claim, requiring that there be no logically possible scenario in which a perfect God could allow evil.

AO1: the evidential problem of evil

The evidential problem of evil claims that evil makes belief in God unjustified.
It is a posteriori, based on our experience of evil in the world.
It is inductive, using this experience as evidence to support the conclusion that there is no God.
E.g.,Hume points to widespread human and animal suffering, including natural disasters and the difficulty of survival due to the way our bodies and environment are structured.
The evidential problem accepts that God and evil could logically co-exist.
However, Hume argues that we cannot justifiably infer a perfect God from an imperfect world.
We are only justified in believing what the evidence supports.
We only experience a mixed imperfect world containing good and evil.
Therefore, belief in a perfectly powerful and good being is not justified.
However, this leaves open that theism might be justified on other grounds, such as religious experience or cosmological arguments, as in Swinburne’s cumulative case.
Modern proponents of the evidential problem of evil go further, arguing that evil does not just fail to support belief in God but counts as evidence against it.
Rowe develops this by comparing explanations.
He asks whether theism or naturalism better explains the amount and apparent pointlessness of suffering.
His example of a fawn dying slowly in a forest fire illustrates suffering with no clear purpose.
Rowe argues that if we cannot see any justifying reason for such suffering, it is reasonable to infer that none exists.
This inductive inference leads to the conclusion that gratuitous evil makes God’s existence unlikely.
Thus, while God and evil may logically co-exist, the scale and kinds of suffering we observe provide strong evidence against an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.

AO1: Augustinian theodicy

Evil exists because of human misuse of free will and is justly punished.
Augustine claims “evil is either sin or punishment for sin”.
Adam and Eve were created with original perfection.
God commanded them to ‘go forth and multiply’, and Augustine held their desires were fully ordered under reason, without lust, allowing perfect rational control.
This prelapsarian harmony was destroyed when they disobeyed God by eating from the tree of knowledge.
Augustine believed all future humans were ‘seminally present’ in Adam.
When Adam sinned, all humans were corrupted by this act.
This resulted in original sin, a corruption of human nature giving us a strong inclination to sin.
A key feature is concupiscence, where bodily desires overpower reason.
Humanity is therefore deeply fallen, which Augustine describes as the ‘massa damnata’.
This explains moral evil, since it results from human actions.
The garden of Eden was originally free from natural evil.
After the Fall, Adam and Eve were punished by being placed in a harsher world, where Adam must toil and Eve suffers pain in childbirth.
Natural evil is therefore punishment for sin, affecting all humanity born into this fallen state.
Augustine also uses the principle of plenitude, which holds that a perfect creation contains a full hierarchy of beings.
What appears evil in isolation may contribute to the overall harmony, like shadows in a painting.
He also suggests some natural evil may be caused by fallen angels or demons.
Thus, evil exists because of free will and is not God’s fault, but is consistent with divine justice.
Evil itself is ‘privatio boni’, an absence of good rather than a substance.
Like blindness is the absence of sight, evil has no positive existence and results from turning away from God’s goodness.

AO2: Augustine vs the scientific evidence

Evidence contradicts key premises of Augustine’s theodicy.
Science supports evolution rather than a historical fall.
Genetic diversity makes it implausible that humanity came from two individuals.
Even if Adam and Eve existed, the idea that sin is inherited resembles Lamarckism, which is scientifically discredited.

Counter

However, original sin can be defended without a literal fall.
Niebuhr argues it is the most empirically verifiable Christian doctrine, and Chesterton claims it is visible “in the street.”
Human immorality, such as Nazism, seems to support this.
Augustine’s story of stealing pears for pleasure suggests humans can enjoy wrongdoing itself.

Evaluation

However, this defence is undermined by modern evidence.
Pinker argues that violence has declined significantly, which challenges the idea that humans are irresistibly sinful.
If sin were unavoidable, such long-term moral improvement would be unlikely.
Alternative explanations are more convincing.
Pelagius argued behaviour is shaped by social environment, illustrated by differing moral cultures.
Freud would explain Augustine’s pear theft as rebellion against social constraints.
Evolutionary theory also explains selfish and aggressive instincts as survival traits.
Crucially, the success of socialisation shows humans can regulate these impulses.
This contradicts Augustine’s claim that graceless humans cannot avoid sin.
So original sin is better explained by natural and social factors than inherited corruption.

AO2: Original sin vs moral responsibility

Pelagius argues original sin conflicts with God’s justice.
A loving God would not hold people guilty for their ancestors’ actions.
Kant supports this, claiming responsibility requires autonomous choice.
Arendt also rejects collective guilt, arguing the Holocaust showed guilt is strictly personal.

Counter

However, the idea of inherited guilt depends on a disputed reading of Romans 5:12.
Many theologians reject original guilt while retaining original sin.
Barth interprets the fall as describing humanity’s shared condition of separation from God, not a literal event.
He argues humans are communal beings, not isolated individuals.
So, humanity shares in Adam’s story as a symbol of collective alienation from God.

Evaluation

However, even this revised view fails to solve the problem of suffering.
For example, a child dying from cancer cannot be explained by personal or collective responsibility.
Barth argues humanity exists in a fallen world, but this does not explain why God permits such a world.
It leaves suffering morally unjustified.
This weakens the appeal to collective responsibility.
It also raises doubts about whether biblical ideas reflect divine truth or ancient social structures.
Collective responsibility may have suited earlier societies, but it conflicts with modern ideas of justice.
So original sin, even in its revised form, remains morally problematic.

AO1: Soul-making theodicy (Irenaeus & Hick)

Soul-making theodicy claims God allows evil because it is necessary for moral development.
Irenaeus interprets Genesis as meaning humans are created morally immature in God’s image and must develop into his likeness.
The best kind of world for this is one containing challenges and suffering, since these are necessary for salvation.
John Hick develops this by rejecting original perfection and a literal Fall.
Humans were always imperfect, and salvation depends on developing moral goodness rather than recovering a lost state.
Hick draws on Aristotle, arguing virtue is formed through habituation in a context of real alternatives.
Some virtues logically require evil, such as compassion needing suffering and courage needing danger.
Virtue must also be freely chosen.
Therefore, even an omnipotent God could not create fully virtuous beings, since virtue must be developed rather than implanted.
Authentic moral choice also requires epistemic distance: if God’s existence were certain, humans would act from fear or reward rather than genuinely choosing the good.
This requires a religiously ambiguous, law-governed world, where events follow consistent natural processes rather than constant divine intervention.
The apparent randomness of suffering helps preserve this ambiguity and maintain moral freedom.
Hick also argues that all will ultimately reach moral perfection, even if that requires post-mortem development.
Thus, even apparently purposeless suffering can be redeemed in the final state.

AO2: Purposeless evil (soul making vs logical & evidential)

Evidence for soul-making is that suffering can develop virtues like compassion.
However, there is also strong counter-evidence.
A child who dies young cannot learn from suffering.
Animal suffering similarly lacks moral development.
Events like the Holocaust seem soul-destroying and excessive.
D Z Phillips argues no reasonable person could see such suffering as justified.

Counter

Hick argues this misunderstands his theodicy.
If suffering always clearly served a purpose, we would see God’s control.
This would remove epistemic distance and undermine genuine virtue.
So God must allow evil to appear random.
Soul-making does not require each instance of suffering to have a purpose.
Instead, a world with apparently random evil provides the conditions for moral growth.

Evaluation

This response shows soul-making is logically possible.
It challenges the claim that a loving God must remove all evil.
However, it fails to address the evidential problem.
Hick’s defence means that any evidence against soul-making can be explained away.
If evil must appear random, then purposeless suffering is expected whether God exists or not.
This makes the theory unfalsifiable.
There is no observable difference between a world with God using evil for soul-making and one with no God at all.
So, while Hick achieves logical coherence, he cannot show his theodicy is actually true.

AO2: Dostoyevsky’s ‘Ivan’ vs soul-making

Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan attacks the coherence of soul-making theodicy.
He argues the process is immoral.
Hick claims suffering is needed to develop virtues like compassion.
But Ivan argues it is indecent to justify the suffering of innocent children for this.
Building heaven on such suffering contradicts the idea of a loving God.
So, soul-making fails to reconcile God with evil.

Counter

However, soul-making can be defended as the only possible way to create morally good beings.
A fully developed soul must freely choose good over evil.
It is logically impossible for God to create already virtuous beings.
So, God must create humans undeveloped with free will in a world containing evil.
This gives the opportunity for genuine moral development.

Evaluation

However, this defence only shifts the problem.
Even if soul-making is necessary after creation, it does not justify creating a world where innocent suffering is inevitable.
Hick argues epistemic distance requires a world where evil appears random, but this includes the suffering of children.
If such suffering is necessary for salvation, then creation itself becomes morally questionable.
A loving God would not initiate a process that depends on innocent suffering.
Ivan’s point is that it is wrong to accept a system built on such a cost.
So, Hick explains evil within the world, but not why such a world should exist at all.
This leaves soul-making unable to defend belief in a loving God.

AO2: The problem of evil & the issue of free will

Omnipotence-preserving theodicies argue God cannot remove evil without a greater cost.
Augustine claims evil is deserved punishment.
Others argue removing evil would undermine free will, since moral evil comes from human choice.
Natural evil is linked to misuse of free will by humans or spiritual beings.
Soul-making theodicies add that suffering is needed for moral development.
So, a perfect God allows evil as the best available option.

Counter

Mackie argues a world where free beings always choose good is logically possible.
If so, a perfect God would create such a world.
He uses a compatibilist view, where freedom means acting according to one’s character.
Plantinga replies that this assumes the wrong kind of freedom.
He defends libertarian free will, where genuine freedom requires the ability to do otherwise.
If this is correct, then God cannot guarantee creatures always choose good.

Evaluation

However, libertarian free will is difficult to defend.
Mackie argues choices must be caused either by character, external factors, or randomness.
Only actions flowing from character can ground responsibility.
But character itself is shaped by prior causes.
So, the idea of uncaused free choice is incoherent.
Compatibilism offers a more plausible account of freedom.
If so, a world where people freely choose good is possible.
A perfect God would create such a world.
So, the existence of evil still counts against the existence of a perfect God.