God Does Not Exist. But If He Does, He is Indifferent and Uninvolved.

Consider the 2.4 million children who die from starvation each year, the 400,000 people who were killed in the Sudanese Civil War, and the 6 million innocent Jews who were inhumanely murdered in the Holocaust. The list goes on. Take the preceding statements to be instances of evil. If the preceding statements prove the existence of evil, then how could one justify the existence of a loving God? 

This essay critically examines this problem, with a focus on theistic responses that appeal to the ideas of free will and human choice. I argue that the existence of evil does indeed provide strong evidence against the existence of God as traditionally conceived, primarily because proposed solutions to reconcile God’s existence with evil suffer from fatal logical inconsistencies and empirical mistruths. 

For the purposes of this essay, the term “God” will refer to a being who, at the very least, is very powerful, very knowledgeable, and morally very good; in other words, an entity who is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect. But if such a being exists, then it seems initially confusing as to why various evils exist. If someone aims a gun at a child, even a moderately good human, if given the power to do so, would prevent that evil. Why, then, does evil exist if there is a being who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect who can stop these acts of evil from occuring? This concern can be organized into the argument as follows: 

1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

2. An omnipotent being has the power to eliminate all evil.

3. An omniscient being knows when evil exists.

4. An omnibenevolent being desires to eliminate all evil.

5. Evil exists.

6. Therefore, God doesn't exist. 

Theists have responded to this challenge somewhat successfully, with the most influential being Alvin Plantinga’s Free Will Defence, which suggests it is possible that God has a morally sufficient reason (MSR) for allowing evil. The general argument is detailed as follows:

1. MSR1 is on the issue of moral (human-caused) evils: God’s creation of persons with morally significant free will is something of tremendous value. God cannot eliminate much of the evil and suffering in the world without also eliminating the greater good of creating persons with morally significant free will, or the condition in which a person is free with respect to X if and only if they are free to either perform or refrain from that action. This freedom means the person can perform morally significant actions, both good and bad. Therefore, it is logically impossible for God to create a world where people possess morally significant free will without the existence of evil and suffering. This limitation, however, doesn’t undermine God’s omnipotence, as omnipotence pertains only to what is logically possible (i.e. no married bachelors or square circles). Thus, God cannot eliminate the potential for moral evil without also eliminating the greater good. 

2. MSR2 is on the issue of natural evils: God allowed natural evil, i.e. disease, famine, etc., to enter the world as part of Adam and Eve’s punishment for their sin in the Garden of Eden.

First, with regard to MSR1, I assert that the morally significant free will we currently exhibit—that is, our ability to make evil choices but also good ones—is an inherently misdesigned thing that not only is void of “immense value,” but could have been easily avoided by an omnipotent creator. 

Imagine you are sitting in traffic on your way to work, and you wish that you had wings so that you may fly over to your office rather than rot in your car. Unfortunately for you, even if you were to get out of your car and start flapping your arms viciously, your shoes would not come even an inch above the ground. Why is this? Because humans are not inherently designed to fly. 

Have you really lost free will just because you cannot fly? The elimination of certain things while not touching others has an equal effect on free will as the elimination of the ability for humans to flap their arms and fly. Put simply, just because I cannot do something by design does not mean I have lost free will; rather, it just means I cannot execute what I want to do. Therefore, if God is an omnipotent being, why not design humans to have free will, but only be able to make morally righteous decisions? 

Consider life to be multiple choice exam. Suppose this exam is very difficult and each question presents you with 26 choices, A to Z. Imagine that the first question asks you what you wish to do with the rest of your life, and you have 26 choices, from being a murderer to being an entrepreneur. If God were to swap that first choice out—that is, the option to become a murderer—would that really limit the free will of the chooser? By definition of morally significant free will it would not.

If we do indeed have morally significant free will and are not victims to predetermined choices, why should that mean that the option to commit evil is made available to us in the first place? Suppose Jeff is interested in Leah and they are free to either start a relationship with each other or not start a relationship together; neither option is predetermined because they have free will. Is that not sufficient for freedom of choice even without allowing them to kill each other? Evil and suffering in this world do not have the intimate connection to the free will that allows us to make choices to form meaningful relationships, love one another, and exhibit virtue. Consider the following argument:

• Evil acts are unrelated to X, so what prevents us from doing X in a world without evil?

For example: 

1. Evil acts are unrelated to forming relationships, so what prevents us from forming relationships in a world without evil?

2. Evil acts are unrelated to loving others, so what prevents us from loving others in a world without evil?

3. Evil acts are unrelated to virtue, so what prevents us from being virtuous in a world without evil?

If God was an omnipotent and omnibenevolent creator, certainly He would have realized that He could have crafted reality more intricately to avoid evil by taking our ability to choose evil away, not by restricting morally significant free will by predetermining our choices, but by tweaking what our choices are in the first place. 

Suppose, then, that it is logically impossible for God to create a world where people possess morally significant free will without the existence of evil and suffering due to the flaws of human nature. If that were the case, then surely it is immoral for God to create a world where people do possess this “gift” of total free will. It means that God is a direct accomplice to every murderer and every dictator, for He has given freedom to the worst people in our world at the expense of the innocent people in our world. 

Therefore, God either did not or cannot exhibit omnipotence, omniscience, or omnibenevolence, and thus, God cannot exist.

Second, I argue that MSR2 is a pathetic attempt at explaining natural evils that are morally equivalent to all other moral evils. As a reminder, MSR2 states: “God allowed natural evil to enter the world as part of Adam and Eve’s punishment for their sin in the Garden of Eden.”

Operating under the assumption that Adam and Eve did exist is already a hefty philosophical favor to this argument. However, suppose Adam and Eve were the first two humans to ever live on this Earth. Assuming they did exist, MSR2 invalidates MSR1 as follows: 

1. If you need evil to be able to have free will, then;

2. Adam and Eve did not have free will to choose to sin;

3. Therefore, they could not have been to blame for natural evil coming into the world.

4. In fact, by the logic of the theist, God is to blame for being morally incorrect by predetermining Adam and Eve’s fate by taking away their freedom of choice! (This is also known as the Paradox of the First Sin.)

Assume, however, that Adam and Eve existed and made those mistakes. Now consider when Adam and Eve supposedly existed. Did they eat the forbidden fruit last weekend? No! The horrible event apparently happened “100,000 to 200,000 years ago!” The point is, Adam and Eve are long gone. Do we still punish the normal German citizen for the horrors of the Holocaust when all of the Nazis have perished? Intuitively, we do not because that would not make sense. Therefore, is it morally right and reasonable for an all-loving God to punish the human race for hundreds of thousands of years due to mistakes made by its two original constituents? 

Ditching the assumption that is fundamental for MSR2 to properly stand, it is logical and evident that the Garden of Eden never happened. Given that the fiction of Adam and Eve is not true and we know that, then the story is irrelevant to the existence of evil. Even if there was a hypothetical universe where Adam and Eve proved that suffering and God can be compatible, we know for a fact that that universe is not the one we reside in. 

Finally, think of the geological and paleontological records that demonstrate natural disasters, disease, and animal suffering that predate even the earliest signs of human existence by millions of years. These factual observations, paired with the obvious flaws of MSR2, seem deeply at odds with the concept of divine goodness and perfect morality. 

Therefore, I conclude that the existence of evil, both moral and natural, provides compelling evidence against the existence of God. The Free Will Defence fails to completely resolve this tension because it mistakenly assumes that meaningful freedom requires and implies the ability to do evil, ignores our moral intuitions about preventing harm, and cannot account for natural suffering. 

While I am not completely disproving God’s existence, as no argument can, the evidence of suffering in our world strongly suggests the adoption of either a limited, non-omnipotent God or a naturalistic worldview where suffering originates from physical processes rather than any divine being. Thus, I leave the theist with the burden of explaining why an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God would create a world filled with such extensive and seemingly pointless suffering.