Problem of Evil Is Evil Essay

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Once again, the theist can simply point out that human knowledge -- either our own, or in the collective sense -- is not only incomplete but not even necessarily close to complete. Furthermore, inference from incomplete evidence is dangerous; before Columbus, European philosophers would have felt themselves on firm "rational ground" to suppose that no edible starchy tuber existed, and yet the potato would have proved them wrong.

Attempts to prove the nonexistence of God through arguments from evil often founder on either the definition of "God" or the definition of "evil." However, while an imperfectly benevolent or even amoral God does not pose a logical problem for those who prefer to consider the divine as unmoved mover, first cause, or as some other morally neutral cosmological principle, such a God is obviously not the benign deity of modern religious orthodoxy. And while a "mystic" or other theodicial investigator may well find a way to transvaluate vast suffering into comprehensible perfection or even rejoice in its very incomprehensibility, the results still need to be communicated clearly and lucidly in order to be convincing. For the rest of us, the persistence of evil is still disturbing by definition.

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In fact, mysticism notwithstanding, the experience of incommensurable evil is possibly the best practical argument for appeals to a divine power as a transcendent locus of otherwise inscrutable justice, goodness, and sense. In the absence of evil, the existence of God and divine attributes are somewhat hypothetical concerns; it is only in a world informed by toothache and genocide (and the cathartic representations thereof) that those who suffer reach for God:

Each […] from a consciousness of his imbecility and misery, rather than from any reasoning, is led to seek protection from that Being on whom he and all nature is dependent. […] The best, and indeed, the only method of bringing everyone to a due sense of religion is by just representations of the misery and wickedness of men (Hume 68)

Whether these reachers after God find relief or not, this pragmatic view of religion may be more fertile than any facile attempt to oppose or reconcile a perfect God with a flawed world. Evil may not be the problem for theism; as a potential generator of explanations and consolations, religion may indeed by the cure.

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