Evolution and the Problem of Evil

Posted on May 5, 2008
Filed Under Philosophy, Religion |

There were a few interesting posts on evolution and the problem of evil at ScienceBlogs over the weekend. The first was at EvolutionBlog. There were a few others but the other one I’ll link to is Rationally Speaking. The whole issue arose from an interview with Francisco Ayala by the New York Times on his views of science and religion. Ayala is a former Dominican priest and one of the top evolutionary biologists. However one of the things he says is that evolution solves the problem of evil. But of course it doesn’t.

The problem is that pointing to evolution says nothing about why God used evolution. Evolution creates a great deal of suffering. So it seems on the face of it that if God turns to evolution he’s not as benevolent and loving as he could be. Why use evolution?

The critics, especial atheists antagonistic to theism, leapt all over this. While I have no desire to defend this as even a moderately successful theodicy let me suggest a few places where one can tweak it.

1. Add in Freedom. While appealing to freedom solves the logical problem of evil it doesn’t resolve the evidentiary problem of evil. (i.e. why these evils) It also demands that freedom be an inherent good. The argument goes (especially as defended by Plantinga) that logically God can’t have both real robust freedom and avoid evil. Applied to evolution you have the same thing. Freedom for matter is an inherent good. Once you allow that you have evolution and God can’t minimize the suffering due to evolution and maintain freedom. Of course it begs the question of why freedom for matter and not just sentient beings is a good thing. But then one could turn around and ask if beings aren’t sentient are they really suffering.

2. Reject creation ex nihilo. This ends up merely the rejection of logical omnipotence. But since it’s the main LDS position I thought I’d throw it in. In this case God is always already embodied in a pre-existing universe of some sort. God thus has no choice about evolution. It just happens. But of course this isn’t really a theodicy. Rather simply removing one of the horns of the dilemma (omnipotence) is the theodicy. As Dennis Potter has argued (although not in any online papers) this doesn’t provide a successful theodicy on its own but provides several paths to get reasonable ones. But as I said this really isn’t using evolution as a theodicy.

But let’s turn it all around. Is evolution evidence against God? I don’t see how. At least no more than earthquakes, pestilence or other natural evils. Those constitute what I term the evidentiary problem of evil. Or evils that it seems like a free will defense simply can’t address.

Comments

7 Responses to “Evolution and the Problem of Evil”

On the free will defence, I’d be interested in what you make of my two posts: ‘Human Sovereignty‘ and ‘The Logical Problem(s) of Evil‘.

The former argues that individual ‘free will’ is no grounds for a theodicy, what one must instead appeal to is collective freedom or sovereignty. The latter post argues that “evils that it seems like a free will defense simply can’t address” are still a form of logical, not evidential, problem of evil. It’s merely a terminological point, but you shouldn’t use needlessly misleading terminology.

For the record I don’t care for Plantinga’s free will defense. That’s why I put the aside of, “I have no desire to defend this as even a moderately successful theodicy.” This is for several reasons. For one it only deals with a certain subset of evils. It can’t deal with natural evils in the least. Secondly even if God gives freedom he clearly allows limits on freedom. (Natural limits if nothing else) If God is interventionist in some cases (which the three main theistic traditions assume) then why not in other cases? Further why not just limit freedom a little bit. i.e. make pedophilia so cognitively repulsive that human brains avoid it.

The reason why I think freedom is a successful solution to the logical problem of evil is that if God creates even one agent who is free then that agent can choose something against God’s will. In that case evil can exist and thus freedom explains evil logically. The reason why I call anything more the evidentiary problem of evil is because you now move to particular evils like natural evils that aren’t logically necessary.

Now your point about terminology is fair. And one I agree with for the most part, as the examples I gave shows. The evidentiary problem of evil is more for more or less successful theodicies and asking, “why these evils.”

The problem with the free will defense is that even with respect to logical evils it can’t explain them all away. But to simply deal with the logical contradiction of the problem of evil it’s fairly successful in my view. The problem is that it doesn’t explain enough.

Now if one expands the free will defense to the universe as a whole then it still doesn’t work since you end up with the Deist position. As soon as you have an interventionist God then clearly you reject any kind of free will defense that could resolve the problem of evil.

My own view of theodicy is that one has to reject logical omnipotence. Of course Mormons did this already by rejecting creation ex nihilo which logical entails the rejection of logical omnipotence. Now as I mentioned limits on God by itself doesn’t provide a successful theodicy. At best it points to where a theodicy is possible. The typical (although not universal) Mormon position is that God is limited in how he can help other intelligences progress or grow. So God is limited in preventing evil due to what exists independence of him and the nature of their existence. Then you are left with evidentiary evils like earthquakes. The skeptic can say that it seems implausible that many evils are necessary for growth.

To add with respect to terminology. I’m inclined to keep the two terms (evidentiary vs. logical) separate since the logical problem is a fairly common and short logical contradiction. Especially when considering history of philosophy it is that form which is referenced by the logical problem of evil. I don’t doubt in the least that there are more complex versions. But I prefer to cast those more complex versions under the rubric of ‘evidentiary problem of evil’ since they deal with the kinds of evils we encounter and not just some abstract problem.

The combination of positing free will and rejecting logical omnipotence addresses the evidentiary problem of evil if we mix in something of an animistic perspective, enabling the theodicy to cascade beyond humans into all the world. Perhaps God can only work with the world (as with humans) through a combination of persuasion and force, with persuasion as the rule, yet with occasional calculated forceful interventions that, although producing relatively unstable temporary situations, are deemed overall less risky to divine interests.

As a side note, it’s interesting to me that research into feasible nanotechnology is bumping into something like the question of whether persuasion or force best describes promising methodologies for bottom-up molecular assembly.

http://transfigurism.org/community/blogs/lincoln_cannon/archive/2008/05/06/4452.aspx

I think one needs to propose certain things that are necessary even in spite of god - or it makes no sense. BUT you can construct a realistic omnipotent and benevolent god form the absolute minimum of necessary assumptions as I did in the comments
here
here they are
1) take as given the potential for multiple universes
2) take as given that any two ‘universes’ that are identical in description are actually just one universe
3) assume god prefers that you exist to you not existing (the same reason for having creation at all)

That argument in the link you gave (not yours but the original post) is pretty poor. It confuses possibility and actuality and assumes God could always actualize what is potential. But the whole point of free will is that God can’t do that. So point (3) only works if one is a Calvinist (or something similar) but most would say Calvinism doesn’t entail real free will.

His argument for (3) is based upon (1) and (2) but doesn’t follow. Some (say Blake Ostler) would say that for God to be really free God must be able to choose evil but doesn’t. He thus confuses two different senses of “won’t.” Admittedly this might cause a problem for some non-deterministic forms of free will. But it definitely won’t for the Libertarian. The problem is that he’s taking “won’t” in a strong sense of necessarily will not.

But this then gets one into fairly subtle distinctions in the free will debate - not all of which everyone will agree upon.

Regarding your argument, I wasn’t quite sure what all the variables you listed in the comment you linked to were supposed to represent. So I skimmed through most of the comments. Earlier on you had a comment that seemed to have the key assumption.

the god seems to want people to exist even if they suffer terribly and want to die (think of the marginal case)

That might work but ends up with the counterargument of asking why it is good for some to exist and not others. I think it only works if God must actualize all possibilities because that is an intrinsic good. (Which is what I think you’re going after) Sort of using the Multiple Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics to resolve the problem of evil. Although if we are talking about a classically omnipotent God it must involve more actualized worlds than the MWI entails. (Since MWI entails just the actualization of all worlds compatible with the laws of physics - with an omnipotent God one must entail the actualization of all logically possible worlds).

In effect one has to discard the distinction between the actual and the possible. This might be an evil world but we’re just lucky enough to not be in a really evil one but unfortunate enough to not be in a really good one.

The question is whether this could be reconciled to other typical theistic beliefs. I suspect that most Christians would be pretty uncomfortable with such a view. But it does solve the problem of evil if actualizing possibility is an intrinsically higher good than any evil in what is actualized. A big if.

Yes, it is more of a mental exercise than a proof, but what I find interesting is that it is not that difficult for me to avoid the problem of evil using some very basic ‘facts’. Which I have difficulty arguing against (for example why would a god not create additional worlds).

The theory can also absorb almost any necessary truth you might propose (if it is well justified). Maybe there is a necessary criteria that places some limits on the worlds that exist but that there is at least a tendency to create worlds in spite of some evil.

> it must involve more actualized worlds than the MWI entails.

yes I presume so.

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