The Problem of Natural Evil Is Still a Problem

The Problem of Natural Evil is Still a Problem

Evil in the world might be divided into two kinds: moral evil and natural evil. Moral evils are things like stealing and killing - things that are caused by people, and natural evils are earthquakes, tsunamis - anything not caused by people. The problem of natural evil is often appealed to in arguments against the existence of God. Of course, different religions have different definitions of God or gods, but most major religions such as Islam and Christianity believe in the standard monotheistic conception of God: God is an all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing being.

The argument from evil is the following: If an all-good God exists, then God would try to eliminate natural evil, and if God is all-powerful, then God can eliminate all natural evil. Yet there is natural evil. Therefore, standard monotheistic God does not exist. This argument attempts to show a strong logical contradiction between an all-good God and a not-all-good world. John Hick, a religious philosopher, challenges the existence of a contradiction, and insists that a world with natural evils is indeed a better world since we can learn things like generosity, morality, forgiveness or braveness. This line of argument is called the soul-making defense. Nonetheless, I will argue that his soul-making defense of theism is not enough to eliminate the problem of natural evil: A world with natural evil might be better than one without, but not all-good in that there is an unfair "system" of soul making opportunities, and not good because of unnecessary suffering for other living things.

Hick's Soul-Making Defense

Hick claims that natural evil can enable people to learn virtues such as generosity, forgiveness and morality. Hick calls the learning of these virtues "soul-making". In other words, while people face natural evil such as earthquakes and cancer or see others suffering from those evils, they can grow spirituality by learning virtues. Therefore, the world with natural evils might be better than a merely hedonistic paradise which has no natural evils. So, an all-powerful, all-good God purposely designed this "better" world with natural evil, and thus the problem of natural evil is, in fact, not a problem.

To simply put his argument,

P1) People can "make souls" only if the world contains natural evil

P2) a world where people make souls is better than one where they cannot

SC) a world with natural evil is better than a world without natural evil [From P1 & P2]

P3) An all good, powerful God should have designed a world with natural evil for the purpose of soul making.

C) The existence of an all-good, all-powerful God and the existence of natural evil are not contradictory.

Problems of the Soul-Making Defense

P1), P2) and SC) are questionable, yet we may let them stay unchallenged for now. However, a fundamental problem of the soul-making defense is that while a world with soul-making might be better than a world without soul making, it is NOT as good as an all-good world - which an all-good God should have designed. Therefore, his P3 is false. One attack on P3 is the following: Being fair is a necessary condition for being all-good. But the world with natural evil for soul making seems to be extremely unfair in terms of soul-making opportunities among individuals. The natural world is also unfair to other living things.

There are two reasons why soul-making with natural evil is unfair enough to believe that soul-making should not be a purpose of an all-good, all-powerful being.

1) Unfair "system" of soul making

It does not seem like there is a fair distribution of soul making opportunities in the world. Some people experience terrible natural evils over long periods, whereas other people encounter a minimum amount of tragic situations over time. For people who do not have enough virtues, it might be God's understandable purpose to make them face more evils (perhaps so that they can catch up with others who have already learned more). However, there are a lot of innocents who are morally well-developed, but suffer from terrible natural evils such as AIDS or blindness, or who have their wives killed in car accidents or thunderstorms. Why would God, whose purpose is teaching us "soul-making", give us such unequal - and unnecessary - opportunities for soul-making?

(A further question, of course, is whether natural evil leads to soul-making at all! In other words, is P1 plausible? Is it plausible that babies learn virtues by excessive pain due to diseases? Or is it necessary to live without eyesight, or die painfully in a car accident in order to learn virtues? If God is all-good, why did He choose such a strange, demented, and often apparently senseless "system" of soul-making?)

2) The natural evils toward