Whence Then is Evil?

Mohammad Gill
Jul 4, 2007

Either wants to abolish evil and cannot; or he can, but does not want to…If he cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked…If as they say can abolish evil, and really wants to do it why is there evil in the world. (Epicurus, as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief, by James A. Haught)

Evil is as old as humankind. The first evil act was committed by Adam’s son, Cain, who murdered his brother, Abel. Credit is usually given to the Greek philosopher, Epicurus, for presenting the problem of evil in the context of an Omnipotent . Christopher Hitchens ( is not Great) formulated the Epicurean postulation recently in syllogistic form as follows:

Is He willing to prevent evil but not able? Then is he impotent?
Is He able but not willing? Then is He malevolent?
Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

There is another way in which this problem is formulated (Dr. Norman Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, 1999). It is as follows:

is the Author of everything.
Evil is something.
Therefore is the Author of evil.

There is a fallacy in such syllogisms due to the belief that is “All Good” (Omnibenevolent) also. Countless generations of human beings debated this issue, and they still do, without finding any satisfactory resolution. There is internal contradiction inherent in the way is usually defined. He has indeed been over-defined with the consequence of internal inconsistencies.

For instance, when we say that is omnipotent we generally mean that He can do everything. Everything includes evil. So an omnipotent should be capable of creating evil. But we also believe that does not (cannot) create evil because He is All Good. We have a paradox at our hands. Similarly there is the well-known “stone paradox:” Can create so heavy a stone that He cannot lift.

There are problems with the definition of omniscient and ‘all good’ also. To illustrate them, let me quote from Introduction of the “Averroes’ Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence),” which is translated by Simon van Den Bergh:

Let us imagine a child and a grown-up man in Heaven who both died in the True , but the grown-up has a higher place than the child. And the child will ask , “Why did you give that man a higher place?” And will answer, “He has done many good works.” Then the child will say, “Why did you let me die so soon so that I was prevented from doing good.” will answer, “I knew that you would grow up a sinner, therefore it was better that you should die as a child.” Then a cry goes up from the damned in the depths of Hell, “Why, O Lord, did you not let us die before we became sinners?”

Ibn-e-Rushd (Averroes) wrote his book in response to Ghazali’s Incoherence of Philosophy and refuted all the objections raised by him against philosophy. At the end of the above narrative, it is written, “Ghazali adds to this: ‘the imponderable decisions of cannot be weighed in the scales of reason…’” Thus, in order to justify the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient , Ghazali shut the minds of the true believers.

These and other similar paradoxes have been debated incessantly but no resolution is found (possible). You cannot both eat the cake and have it. is either omnipotent or He is not; He cannot be both at the same time.

Considering the problem of evil in the world, can we escape the paradox by suggesting that it is the Devil and not who created the evil? This also has one insurmountable problem. One may ask: Who created the Devil? We then come back to who indeed is believed to have created the Devil. Devil is an epitome of evil. If created the Devil, effectively, He also created evil.

Essentially then evil is the paradoxical stone that has created and cannot lift.

Another escape route from such a paradoxical fix that is provided to omnipotent and omniscient is that of Free Will. The argument goes that created man with a free will – he has a choice of doing good or doing evil. Thus created a potential for evil in the form of free will and man is the actual committer of evil acts. In this way, has a basis for rewarding the good with eternal bliss in the Paradise and burning the evildoers in the eternal fires of Hell. It is implicit in this argument that created evil so that He could sadistically burn the evildoers. No matter, how you cut it, if is indeed omnipotent, He is also responsible for creating evil directly or indirectly by endowing the human beings with free will.

The problems of evil and free will have been discussed by the philosophers over the last couple of millennia, to . But the problem of rationalizing evil and omnipotent is like squaring the circle. From purely logical viewpoint something needs to give before the inherent fallacy can be removed. We should either be content with a less omnipotent or accept that “evil is good.” Since majority of the people cannot accept the latter view (because evil is defined as “something not good”), we need to redefine with a lesser “Almighty” attribute. The monotheists have refused to accept this view and hence the problem continues to persist. A logical mind will come to the conclusion that of theism simply cannot exist.

in this sense is more than a metaphor as Khalid Sohail has suggested in one of his articles ( is a Metaphor, .com, April 8, 2007); He is a paradox.

According to Bishop John Shelby Spong, “Theism, as a way of defining , is dead. can no longer be understood with credibility as a Being, supernatural in power, dwelling above the sky and prepared to invade human history periodically to enforce the divine will. So, most theological -talk today is meaningless unless we find a new way to speak of .”