THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL & SUFFERING
This earthquake struck on the morning of Saturday 1 November, 1755 and demolished the city of Lisbon in the Kingdom of Portugal. It is estimated up to 100,000 people died in the quake, tsunami and fires. The centre of the city, with its magnificent churches, was swallowed up by the earth.
This disaster struck on a Christian holiday - All Saints Day - and the news of it passed all around Europe. Some churchmen identified the earthquake as the "wrath of God" - a punishment on sinners. Other Christians rejected this explanation: why would God punish sinners by destroying churches? The philosophers of the Enlightenment proposed naturalistic interpretations (Kant supposed there were underground caves of fiery gas but these incorrect ideas gave rise to the modern understanding of earthquakes and volcanoes). They also debated the religious implications. |
An engraving shows the destruction as it happened - but the earthquake also features in the 2014 video game Assassins Creed: Rogue (but with a science fiction explanation!)
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During the Second World War, the Nazis set out to murder the entire Jewish population of Europe and to destroy its culture. In 1941 there were about 11 million Jews living in Europe; by May 1945 the Nazis had murdered six million of them. One-and-a-half million of these were children. Whilst the Jews of Europe were the Nazis’ primary target, many millions of other people were also imprisoned, enslaved and murdered, such as Roma (Gypsies) and people with disabilities. The Nazis did not act alone. They were supported by people from the countries they occupied across Europe. Most countries stood by while the Nazis and their accomplices carried out the mass murder of the Jewish people.
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"Work Makes You Free": the infamous entrance to the death camp at Auschwitz with its mocking advice
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When I say we live in the time of the death of God, I mean that ... We stand in a cold, silent, unfeeling cosmos, unaided by any purposeful power beyond our own resources. After Auschwitz, what else can a Jew say about God? - Richard Rubenstein
John Stuart Mill proposes the Evidential Problem of Evil which admits that there might be reasons why God would allow the existence of some evil, but argues that the amount of evil and suffering in the world is excessive. This argument was supported more recently by William Rowe.
These are what Paul Draper calls "gratuitous evils" - evils which don't seem to contribute towards a greater good or don't seem like necessary by-products of something good. Of course, there might be reasons for gratuitous evils too - but they're not obvious. The video is a 10-minute breakdown of Rowe and Draper's argument.
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Evidential Problem of Evil as a J.L. Mackie-style inconsistent triad
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The Hebrew Bible (and Christian Old Testament) describes the story of Job, who is tormented by Satan with God's permission. Job loses his wealth and his family and suffers disfiguring diseases.
Job never loses his faith in God, but he is convinced God has treated him unfairly. At the end of the story, God appears in the form of a lightning storm and reveals himself to Job as a numinous being who is beyond human understanding. Job repents for questioning God's ways and God rewards Job for his faith with health, wealth and happiness. |
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Corruption has appeared in the earth because of what the hands of man have wrought - The Quran 30: 41
do not think God is unaware of what the wrongdoers do! He only delays until a day when their eyes will stare in horror - The Quran 14: 42
Hinduism has many different traditions, but most of them do not focus on a single divine person who is the creator of the universe and is responsible for what happens.
Hinduism is usually a monist religion, in which positive and negative forces are different aspects of God: Brahma creates and Vishnu preserves but Shiva destroys so that Brahma can create anew. This Hindu tradition therefore regards much natural evil as an expression of God - it is Shiva, the Lord of the Dance, who brings death and destruction so that there can be new life.
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Left to Right: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva
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All creatures, even gods, are subject to passions. Otherwise the universe, composed as it is of good and evil, could not continue to develop - the Devibhagavata 4, 13
Buddhism shares many features with Hinduism (the same way that Christianity and Islam share many features with Judaism). The Buddha began his journey towards Enlightenment when he recognised the existence of dukkha ("suffering") in the world.
The Noble Truth of Suffering is this: Birth is suffering; ageing is suffering; sickness is suffering; death is suffering - The Buddha Buddhists do not believe in a divine person who is responsible for the world. Instead, they see everything (including the gods) as trapped in a cycle of "becoming".
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In Buddhism, the "Three Poisons" are desire, aversion and ignorance. The solution is to recognise that our own personalities are illusions and break our attachments to ourselves and to the world. This non-attached state is blissful and it is called nibanna (Nirvana); nibanna can be reached through meditation.
Buddhism's solution to the Problem of Evil is the most radical of all: evil doesn't exist because we ourselves do not really exist; if there are no persons, then no persons can be suffering. Buddhism aims to show that evil is an illusion by showing the persons are illusions too.
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YES
Natural evils are produced by a world God is supposed to have created, which suggests either that God wants the world to contain suffering or that he is not competent at creating worlds. Moral evils result from human actions that God, being all-powerful, should be able to detect and prevent if he wants to.
Even if God punishes evil-doers on Judgment Day and provides a heaven for believers with no natural evil in it, there is still the fact of suffering that did take place and can't be undone. There's also the suffering of animals, which can't be paid for by punishing those that harmed them (usually other animals) or recompensed by a heavenly afterlife.
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NO
The amount of natural evil in the world would be minimal if humans were not so greedy, careless, wasteful and inconsiderate. Moral evil is something that God can and will punish in the afterlife or on Judgment Day. It only appears as if God is not acting to destroy evil; he will, but in his own time.
God's goodness may not be like our own and the existence of suffering may be part of an inscrutable divine plan. Suffering itself may be illusory - especially animal suffering, which may not be what it appears. If God is absolutely omnipotent, he may be able to change the past and remove the fact of suffering.
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