Objections to Augustine’s Solution to the Problem of Evil
There are generally considered to be three main necessary characteristics of God, especially in a traditional Christian conception. God must simultaneously be all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omnipresent), and perfectly good. However, if we take the simple premise “evil exists” to be true, somewhat of a paradox arises. How can an all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good God permit evil to exist? The existence of evil suggests that God is either unable to destroy it, oblivious to its existence, or not inherently good. Therefore, as the argument goes, if evil is permitted to exist, God is either not all-powerful, not all-knowing, or not perfectly good, and therefore not God.
Troubled by this argument, known as “The Problem of Evil”, Saint Augustine, a 3rd century Christian theologian and philosopher, sought to find a solution. In book VII of his collection of writings, Confessions, Augustine argues that evil is not a force that can be created but rather exists as the absence of good. He then claims that evil only arises when humans use their freewill, which God has endowed them with, to turn away from God. While I find Augustine’s solution feasible, I do not find it compelling for two reasons. First, there appears to be an excess of seemingly gratuitous evil in the world, such as childhood cancer or animal suffering, that does not appear to derive from human free will. Second, and more broadly, I don't find his argument reasonable because our universe does not reflect our expectation of one created by a good God. To fully understand these counterpoints, let's analyze Augustine's argument more deeply.
Premises:
God is incorruptible and inviolable, and immutable. Nothing evil can come from God.
All that exists was created by god and therefore good.
Because all that is created by God is good, Evil is not a substance created by God.
Evil is rather the privation (absence) of good.
Humans can use the freewill endowed to them by God, to pervert good and turn away from God.
Conclusion:
Evil exists not as a creation of God but rather as the privation of good, which humans can perpetuate by using their free will to turn away from God. Therefore, the existence of evil does not undermine the power, knowledge, or goodness of God.
My first objection to this argument is in Augustine's suggestion that all evil is a result of the human choice to turn away from the will of God. Many of the great evils of the world—war, genocide, murder, and rape, for example—are a direct result of human decision-making. Yet it doesn't take much searching to find examples of great evils that do not seem to be in any way related to human choices. Diseases, medical conditions like cancer or Alzheimer's, natural disasters, and freak accidents are types of evil that can and sometimes can only exist as a result of nature.
Augustine counters this by arguing that natural evils such as natural disasters, sickness, death, decay, and even creatures like worms and vipers are not evil but rather exist as part of a greater good unfolding through the will of God. Every event in the universe is moving towards harmony and perfection as a whole, and what we would consider as evil found in nature is actually just a limited perspective on something that in its proper place, serves to the goodness of the universe according to God's will.
However, I believe that there are natural evils that cannot reasonably be considered good or fit into the framework of total goodness. The two examples I would use to most effectively illustrate this are the evils of animal suffering and childhood cancer. Throughout nature and spanning millions of years, life of non-human creatures on earth would have been filled with incredible amounts of pain and suffering and therefore evil. A baby bird plummets to its death, learning to fly for the first time, a deer gets trapped under a fallen tree and slowly starves to death, a mother cheetah is unable to catch any food, and as a result, must eat her own cubs to live. If a good God did exist, surely He would not permit this suffering. Something for children with cancer. An argument could be made for the necessity of cancer as a way to ensure the natural life span of humans, but what argument can we make for the necessity of gene mutation, which indiscriminately kills children?
The original counter, that all of these events will ultimately unfold in a way that maximizes good, is still applicable, however. For example, maybe children who die of cancer would have gone on to cause more evil in the world. But first off, this would be an incredibly hurtful idea to suggest to the parents of a child who died of cancer. I realize that this isn't a valid argument to make in terms of logic, but just imagine explaining to the parents of a dead child that their child died in order to maximize good in the universe. Second, why would a good God create a universe and enact a will that requires these natural evils to occur? If god created cancer to regulate human life spans, why would he allow it to affect children?
However, maybe these evils exist to counter the evil of human freewill. For example, people who were destined to brutal dictators, murderers, or warlords would end up as miscarriages. But if this were the case, then why weren't Hitler or Dahmer killed as babies? Additionally, wouldn't God be undermining the very free will he endowed humans with by killing evil people as children?
However, as compelling as I find these objections, it would not stray from the original premises of the argument to counter with the argument that ultimately, a human cannot understand the will of God. God, being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all good, would have His own perfect reasons for creating the universe the way it has been created, and because we are simply humans, we cannot understand them. While I think that this is a valid argument to make, I don't think that it is a reasonable one. To me, it seems like the argument for the existence of a good God requires a lot of different complicated argumentation, followed by very specific counter points to specific objections that seem almost coincidental. Animal suffering, earthquakes, disease, and child cancer are necessary pieces of a grand plan of good that we just can't understand. Whereas the argument against a good God is simply the claim that evil does exist. Sure, it is feasible that everything that happens serves a greater good. But isn't a universe where good and evil seem to affect beings without any rhyme or reason, where things happen at random and we deal with the consequences no matter what they are, where outcomes are often unjust, exactly the kind of universe we would expect from a god who is not perfectly good? So while a universe created by a perfectly good God is feasible, it is more reasonable to assume that, given what we have observed about the universe, God is either unable to stop evil, oblivious to it, or unwilling to stop it.
