The Logical Problem Of Evil and Why it Fails.

Let me share with you, why I changed my mind on the logical argument from evil. The prima facie argument against the existence of a classically defined perfect being (God) - an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect one - is the logical problem of evil. 

I think, that it is simply an unsound and weak argument against the claim that there is a perfect being. It can be stated (roughly) as follows;

1. If a perfect being exists, then no gratuitous evil - the evil whose elimination would not prevent any greater good, or allow any worse or equally bad evil - exists. - By definition.

2. There does exist gratuitous evil. - By Observation.

3. Therefore, there does not exist a perfect being. - Conclusion.

The first premise of this argument is pretty straightforward and at first sight, uncontroversial. A perfect being's preference of preventing gratuitous evil follows by definition of what we mean by a perfect being. Perhaps, there might be some difficulty in explaining what are the definitions of omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and omniscience that might prevent one from knowing what they imply, when we talk about the statements

(I) God is omnipotent 

(II) God is omniscient

(III) God is morally perfect 

(IV) Evil exists.

These statements are not explicitly contradictory. One must first add some secondary information about what an omniscient, omnipotent and morally perfect being would do about evil, like - an omniscient being would know about the occurrence of evil, before it does. An omnibenevolent being would want to prevent the evil. An omnipotent being would have all the capacity to prevent the evil. Yet evil exists, therefore one of the properties must be false.

The problem is, that this secondary information about the traits of the perfect being, are not very precise (and I think, they cannot be). What if God just has to let an evil occur to achieve a greater good that is beyond our comprehension? What if it is logically impossible for God to achieve something more important for him without letting this evil occur? What if, if God eliminated this evil, some worse evil will take place?. These are "some" of the questions that are nearly not possible for us, human beings, to have any meaningfull knowledge about. But, one might say, that we are talking specifically about gratuitous evil as defined earlier, so all these questions presuppose that it is possible that the evil is not gratuitous. What of such evils?

That brings us to the second premise. The problem here, is even more difficult to establish. If a hard atheist has to claim that an evil E is gratuitous, then he must know, not only, the answers to all the questions asked above, but also, to all the questions that could possibly be asked about the previous topic. This, in my assessment, is an unachievable burden, given the cognitive limitations of humans. It is fairly uncontroversial to say, that the reason the first premise is problematic, is exactly because it is linked to the second one, which is not at all tenable for any human beings to establish.

The burden of proof is on the atheist. She has to show that gratuitous evil actually does exist. And because she cannot (even in principle, given human cognition), the argument has almost no force at all to convince a reasonable theist. Now, I am not saying that the existence of evil, give no evidence whatsoever against God's existence, I am just saying, that, what the argument needs to bring up a clear distinctive contradiction, is not tenable for us and hence, one cannot desfensibly make out the contradiction explicitly.

I shall, in my other blogs (in work), cover the evidential problem of evil, and why I think, ceteris paribus, it is a good argument against a perfect being's existence through a methodology that uses theory comparison of perfect being classical theism and ontological naturalism.