I have discussed the problem of evil before. It is one of the most popular arguments against theism for online atheists and professional academics alike. It is also usually taken to be an extremely silly and unsound argument by theists. But how can an argument both be regarded so highly and yet so poorly? As I see it, one reason for this is apologists not taking the argument seriously and doing their best to come up with reasons not to think about it or think it through. The vast majority of responses to the problem demonstrate a fundamental lack of charity and critical thinking. In this essay, I want to respond to some of the most common theodicies that apologists will present. I hope to show that they are, at best, only partial explanations, and that, at least as I see it, they fail to resolve the contradiction between an all-loving being and the suffering in our world.
Presenting the Problem of Gratuitous Suffering
The problem of evil has many different formulations. Some, by my estimation, are more plausible than others. For the most part, it does not matter which version we choose, the responses tend to be the same. So, for our purposes, I will briefly present my preferred (deductive) version of the argument:
P1: Theism posits that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving being exists
P2: If theism is true, then gratuitous suffering should not exist because an all-loving being would not want to cause unnecessary suffering.
P3: Rape, animal predation and death, and human mental degradation are examples of gratuitous suffering that exist
C: Therefore, theism is false
Let us turn to each premise and justify it.
First, P1 states that theism is the belief that a perfect being exists; that is, a divine person who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. This is just a definitional premise. It is the particular conception of theism that we are arguing about. So, the god that this argument is concerned with is a being that can do all possible things, knows all positive facts, and loves everything to the greatest degree possible.
Second, P2 makes a claim about what we should expect to find, given that theism is true. In other words, it describes the world as if a perfect god existed. I contend that when we think of a world containing such a perfect being, we do not immediately imagine a world full of suffering. Of course, this argument is concerned with gratuitous suffering. Gratuitous suffering is suffering that is not required to bring about some other, greater good. So, in this argument, I’m being particular and stating that a certain kind of suffering – i.e. suffering without good reason – is not expected if a perfect god exists. This is the case because suffering is unwanted and detrimental to us. And given that fact, combined with god’s all-loving nature, god will want to do that which requires no suffering, if possible. He will only cause suffering when there is no other way to bring about the particular good the god is after (in this case, loving and caring for us).
Third, in P3, I argue that cases of rape, animal predation in the wild, and the fact that our mental capacities degrade with time are all instances of gratuitous suffering. The act of sexually assaulting someone is a truly disgusting thing and causes so much harm and suffering. I think any sufficiently loving being will want to prevent each and every case of sexual assault, especially those perpetrated against minors. No good comes from this (although, keep this in mind when we turn to theodicies). Next, the current ecosystem and food chain are built upon suffering. Some animals cannot exist without hunting, hurting, and eating other animals. That means the very nature of our world is such that many, many animals have to suffer and die. Furthermore, so many tragically die in wildfires and natural disasters without anyone ever hearing about them. Finally, one aspect of human life is bodily degradation. Although this can all be terrible, I think mental degradation, in particular, is awful. Dementia, Huntington’s, and Alzheimer’s are all common for people as we age, and they cause nothing but suffering and pain.
All of this, taken together, makes it very unlikely that a perfect god exists. Any perfect god would want to bring about the best possible world. It may be that the best possible world must contain some suffering that is required to bring about other, greater goods not possible without some suffering. But the best possible world, by definition, will not contain gratuitous suffering, as any such world could have existed containing the same goods but without the unnecessary suffering, thus not being the best possible world.
Now that we have a clear understanding of the problem of evil, or more precisely, the problem of gratuitous suffering – and you will start to notice why I chose this formulation as we respond to the theodicies – we can turn to the many apologetic attempts to refute the argument.
Responding to Theodicies
It’s Our Fault – The Fall
Let’s start with the simplest and usually the first answer you get from Christians: god did create the world perfectly, but then we messed it up. Classically, Christians posit a “fall”; an event where humans acted in such a way as to disobey god and then evil, sin, and suffering entered into the world. The problem with this as a response to gratuitous suffering is that it doesn’t account for any of the things I mentioned. Our original sin does not directly cause animals to suffer, people to have sexually perverse ideas, our bodies to be capable of unconsented sexual acts, or our minds to degrade over time. These would all be things that god decided to bring about as a consequence of our sinning. Thus, they can only serve, at best, as retributive punishment and justice for wrongs, but in that case, they would be unjust, as it was the sins of Adam and Eve, not mine or any animals’. Punishing someone else for another person’s crime is certainly gratuitous suffering. Furthermore, if our decision to disobey god was the actual sin, then once again, god made the world such that it was possible for gratuitous suffering to exist (via us sinning). All of this demonstrates that positing any sort of act or event as the reason for the existence of gratuitous suffering is only pushing the problem back one more step. It still does not provide a necessary reason for all this suffering. God can punish people for the sins they commit without resorting to the mentioned gratuitous suffering.
Free Will Requires The Possibility of Suffering
Alright, but what about free will? Our possessing free will seems to include the possibility of doing some wrong things. And free will seems awfully important to us, so would the good of people having free will explain the existence of gratuitous suffering? This is also a common response. If free will is truly good, something required for us to have a meaningful and genuine relationship with god, then we must be allowed to make our own decisions, and much of what we decide includes harming others. I have a number of problems with this response. First, free will obviously and clearly does not explain the existence of gratuitous animal predation and suffering. The natural history of our world and the tremendous amounts of suffering that animals have endured have nothing to do with human choices. Second, it is not clear that any of this sort of suffering is required. Christians, for example, believe that people can go to heaven, and they will surely still have free will there (how else would they properly and genuinely relate to god?), and yet heaven is said to be free of suffering. The gratuitous suffering currently coming from human free will is only possible because we have physical constitutions with flaws, animalistic brains, behaviours, and drives. All of that is due to god, not us. Finally, I don’t even see how the necessary existence of free will explains the gratuitous suffering I make reference to. I already said animal suffering is not explained by it, and of course, our bodies degrading is not our choice, but even sexual assault is not explained. If I saw someone attempting to assault someone else, I would think the right thing to do is step in. I’m not nullifying the free will of the perpetrator, I’m just stopping them from harming someone else. It seems trivially true that god could intervene in such a way and not cause anyone any harm in the process. At the end of the day, I ask myself, am I really to believe that free will within our world, and specifically the possibility of rape, is required for god’s best possible world? I’m mostly inclined to say I’m not.
God Does Not Cause Suffering Because It Is A Lack Of Something
Right, but evil is not an actual thing. It is the absence of goodness. See, it is not god that causes evil; it is the very lack of the goodness of god that we call evil. This is a pretty old response, and it sounds very philosophical. It is usually raised against more classically formulated problems of evil, one that actually uses the word evil in the argument. They do this because when the notion of evil is left sufficiently vague, it seems reasonable to suppose that it is not an actual thing but rather the absence of a thing, like darkness. This is partly the reason why I chose to formulate the argument in the way I did, referring to gratuitous suffering. It adds a level of detail that makes it clear we are not just talking about some privation. Animal suffering is built into the nature of our world. Sexual assault is a result of our physical and faulty natures. Our slow and detrimental mental degradation happens because of our bodies’ natures. And all of these involve the causing of some actual negative psychological states in the world. People experience trauma, suffering, harm, and anguish. These are real bad experiences and phenomena. I think, for any sufficiently loving being, all of these would be instances of actual wrongs that they would want to stop or change. Given what I have argued above, god, if he existed, has always been able to do so.
Suffering Leads To Moral and Character Growth
Okay, but what if god does allow all this suffering because it leads, in the greater scheme of things, to character and moral growth? Suffering makes us stronger. Now, I’ll be honest here: this view seems deeply problematic and troubling to me. It seems like a comforting thought no matter what your position in life is, and yet, it encourages us to excuse certain wrongs. Those privileged enough not to have suffered life’s great tragedies can use it as an empty statement to excuse them for ignoring the inequalities in the world. Those who suffer truly awful things can use it to help improve their outlook, but it also just as easily becomes a tool used against them and a crutch that stagnates their growth. But ignoring this for a moment, the claim is, unfortunately, patently false. If suffering exists because god uses it to help us grow, then you would expect suffering to be distributed in such a way that it mostly affects those with poor character, as they are the ones who most need it. But this is not the case. Suffering seems randomly distributed. Furthermore, you would also expect suffering to be effective at causing character growth. We would look at the world and find many young people struggling with life but also mostly well-adjusted, morally good older people who have grown from life’s many challenges. But this, too, is not the case. If suffering is a poor catalyst for character growth, then a lot of it is, in fact, unnecessary and unhelpful. Finally, I will once again specifically point to my instances of gratuitous suffering and argue that these are clearly not employed in the service of moral and character growth.
I have one further problem with the character growth response. I think it gets things backwards. I certainly appreciate that because we believe things like honesty, courage, and wisdom are goods, and they seem to require the bad that they are good for, we think that the bad is required and therefore not really that bad. But some examples seem to demonstrate the implausibility of this view. Consider the case of Martin Luther King Jr. and his fight for racial justice. I certainly agree that it is good for someone to face injustice with courage and perseverance. But are we really to believe that all of the racial injustice, all the pain and hate, are all worthwhile and required because they led to someone like Martin Luther King Jr.? Or consider the effect that seeing your child go through excruciating pain and suffering can have. Sure, I can see how such things will cause the parent to develop compassion, resilience, and kindness. But these are only good because of the situation we find ourselves in. It is not suddenly good that this child has to suffer this much. It just seems so selfish and ridiculous to view people as these kinds of pawns. To me, virtues are good because they are appropriate responses to the situations we find ourselves in and make up what we would consider, given the world we live in, a life worth living. They are not just good in themselves. If they were, we would consider the arsonist firefighter to be praiseworthy for starting all the fires they would eventually put out to save the people put in danger. But that is ridiculous. Just because firefighters are brave, and they need a fire in order to be brave firefighters, does not mean that it is a good thing people’s houses catch on fire, and a person that causes this to happen is not some justified source of great moral character growth.
Conclusion
I think I’ll leave it at that for now. The responses I have presented demonstrate what I have been trying to explain; that most theodicies demonstrate a lack of taking the argument seriously. It seems like apologists do not fully appreciate the extent, nature, and distribution of the suffering in our world, and they are far too quick to want to explain a very narrow set of occurrences or rely on sophistic notions of goodness and evil. Not only this, but it always seems like there is some other reason that trumps god’s love for us, a god whose love is supposed to be infinite and all-encompassing. Properly grappling with the seeming contradiction between the world we find ourselves in and the one we expect to find if a morally perfect and all-loving god existed entails fully investigating the state of our world and not making up patently disrespectful and dismissive excuses for genuine suffering and hardship. I will continue to argue that people are perfectly justified in being sceptical that our world is one that contains a divine, infinite, loving person at its centre. We can certainly care for one another, and we are better off for doing so, but the universe as a whole seems deeply disinterested and indifferent. And that right there is the problem, our world looks like one of indifference to our lives.
Casual Philosophy 
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