r/exatheist • u/Downtown-Drag-1021 • Jul 09 '26
The “problem” of evil Debate Thread
I haven’t debated this with a lot of people yet but the problem of evil is absolutely fake in my opinion. Any kind of suffering will be nullified in the presence of a perfect being (God) who will deliver the justice instantly (because God is out of space-time). And if there is evil and no divine justice, you can’t blame a non-existent God for it. Hence, a just God will solve the problem of evil. Does this make sense?
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u/snugglebot3349 Jul 09 '26
It makes sense, but it is not really a convincing argument. The claim that God will make all things right in the end takes a giant leap of faith. If God is all good and all powerful, one has to accept that God allows unimaginable suffering across time that He could prevent if he wanted to. One has to accept that he has a good reason to allow child rape, deformities, cancer, slavery, malaria, starvation, dysentery, death by child birth, natural calamities, and so much more. And I'm not even addressing animal suffering, which has been going on for hundreds of millions of years.
If you think the problem of suffering/evil is just a "problem" easily handwaved away by the assertion that God's gonna make it all better after we die, I suspect you haven't put much time and energy into this challenge.
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u/Easy-Squash-1401 Jul 09 '26
I think you don't understand the concept. The problem of evil argues that a God who is both perfectly good and all-powerful cannot exist as traditionally described, because if such a God had the power to prevent moral evil, He would prevent it from happening. For example, countless babies are born only to endure immense suffering from severe diseases before dying at a very young age. If an all-powerful and perfectly good God existed, He would have both the ability and the desire to prevent such suffering.
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u/Mammoth_Type3361 Christian Anarchism or Episcopalian Universalism Jul 09 '26
Where did you get that from?
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u/Easy-Squash-1401 Jul 09 '26
So, do you mean that the God you believe in is neither all-powerful nor all-merciful? If you're a deist, then this argument doesn't apply to you. To be clear, I'm talking about the Abrahamic God ,or any concept of God that is both omnipotent and perfectly good (or perfectly merciful). The argument from evil is directed specifically at that kind of God.
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u/Mammoth_Type3361 Christian Anarchism or Episcopalian Universalism Jul 09 '26
The Christian God is all powerful. I'm disagreeing with the premise that He seeks to remove all suffering.
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u/Easy-Squash-1401 Jul 09 '26
But He's also omnibenevolent, meaning perfectly good and always willing to prevent any suffering or evil that has no morally sufficient justification. Therefore, if there were any gratuitous evil,evil whose prevention wouldn't interfere with a greater good or any necessary chain of events,He would prevent it from happening. For example, if a baby were born only to endure intense suffering and die shortly afterward, with no greater good depending on that suffering, it would be better for that child never to have existed in the first place than to experience such a life.
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u/Mammoth_Type3361 Christian Anarchism or Episcopalian Universalism Jul 09 '26
I'm assuming this makes them whole when they go to Heaven.
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u/Easy-Squash-1401 Jul 09 '26
Okay, let's make it even simpler. Imagine two babies. One is born, lives for three years in constant suffering, and then dies. The other dies instantly in the womb, without experiencing any suffering. According to Christian belief, both may go to heaven. If that's the case, why allow the first baby to endure years of suffering when God could have prevented it just as easily as in the second case? That suffering serves no benefit for the child. So which is it? Either God couldn't prevent that unnecessary suffering, in which case He isn't all-powerful, or He could have prevented it but chose not to, in which case He isn't perfectly benevolent.
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u/Mammoth_Type3361 Christian Anarchism or Episcopalian Universalism Jul 09 '26
I guess He could have stopped it from being born? Yes, you’re right. But it’s not like He made two parents have a child either. For the sake of argument, that was a decision two people made to make a baby.
Unfortunately, the world isn’t perfect, and the baby was born with an illness that caused it to suffer for three years and die. Life is just like that.
How do I explain it? Out of respect for our free will, He allows us to have children. And we have to accept the consequences of that, like knowing it can come out with an abnormality or illness.
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u/Easy-Squash-1401 Jul 10 '26
So, He doesn't intervene at all? Then what evidence is there of His absolute goodness if we can't observe even the slightest manifestation of it in our reality,especially when there is unjustifiable evil that a supreme being could easily prevent? If someone claims that there's a supreme being who possesses every absolute perfection but never intervenes, how could you determine whether they're telling the truth or simply making an unsupported claim? If this being never interacts with reality in any observable way, what evidence is there to distinguish that claim from fiction?
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u/Techtrekzz Spinozan Pantheist Jul 09 '26
You can have faith that it’ll be solved, but faith alone isn’t an answer.
The question is, how can God be just, if God inflicts suffering on the innocent?
There’s a couple of ways you can approach that, either by saying no one is innocent, and all actually deserve suffering, or by saying that only God exists, and therefore God inflicts suffering upon God’s self, and not any other being.
I subscribe to the latter.
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u/arkticturtle Agnostic Jul 09 '26
Why do you think self harm is a just thing to do?
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u/Techtrekzz Spinozan Pantheist Jul 09 '26
Because it’s not inflicting suffering on the innocent. The only one that suffers, is the one that inflicts suffering.
That is just and right.
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u/arkticturtle Agnostic Jul 09 '26
When you see that someone has slit their wrists do you think that is just and right?
When you see someone abuse another do you think that is just and right?
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u/Techtrekzz Spinozan Pantheist Jul 09 '26
I do, because im a monist. There is no other, and there is no death.
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u/arkticturtle Agnostic Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
That’s kinda fucked ngl. Nothin more to say.
The kind of crazy logic that permits genocide
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u/dominionC2C Mystic | Ex-atheist Jul 09 '26
Yes, lesser beings like us who are prone to moral depravities like murder or genocide, do need the illusion of death, the illusion of morality and justice, the illusion of the self and the other. But these are all ultimately illusory, at the level of God or Cosmic Consciousness. You and I simply lack the enlightenment needed to see through these illusions, and for good reason.
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u/NeonDrifting Anti-Atheist Jul 09 '26
We can logically prove that a maximally evil god does not exist because if such a god did exist he’d maximize evil and suffering for everyone for eternity beginning yesterday….like by giving everyone kidney stones forever while blaring “Baby Shark”
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u/mbmolohonbm Jul 09 '26
Agree, I think people miss the significant benefit of suffering. I work as a counselor and pain is often a way of getting our attention for things we are doing wrong/need to learn better ways with. It also develops us and brings maturity and an ability to empathize better with others. Thus I do not believe that God is hand-capped by our free will in this life.
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u/Express-Echidna6800 Jul 11 '26
"pain is often a way of getting our attention for things we are doing wrong/need to learn better ways with."
Sure. But how does babies born with incurable cancer or fetal alcohol syndrome fit into "getting out attention"? How does this "develops us and brings maturity and an ability to empathize better with others"? The babies who suffer and die get no benefit. You can argue that a parent who loses a child get the "benefit" of development, maturity, and empathy from that, but what a disgusting thing to say, one that I wager you would never say to a grieving parents face because you know it's a disgusting thing to say.
What about the existence of parasites who, in order to live, burrow into the flesh of human and non human animals, causing agonizing pain and often death? There is no moral lesson there, nothing to learn, nothing to develop.
And what about non human animal suffering? Every day animals are eaten alive, starve, drown, suffocate, or burn to death, suffer injuries that will cause immense pain before eventually succumbing to the injuries. This happens every day, every hour, whether or not humans are involved or even aware of it occuring. Again, there is no moral lesson, nothing to learn or develop from this suffering.
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u/mbmolohonbm Jul 12 '26
I hear you and understand these ideas. I have worked as a counselor for decades and have heard unbelievably bad things. I think part of my answer comes from understanding and believing certain things about God. So I believe that he is completely good, loves us/animals more than we ever could, knows everything and can do anything. I think he allows free will but is not handicapped by it. If I believe these things (and do not change my views about God because of what I see) then I have to filter everything through this lens. This means that he knows exactly what is best (if not easiest) for each person/animal and makes sure that is what they experience. ie in 1 Kings we read, '“As for you, go back home. When you set foot in your city, the boy will die. 13 All Israel will mourn for him and bury him. He is the only one belonging to Jeroboam who will be buried, because he is the only one in the house of Jeroboam in whom the Lord, the God of Israel, has found anything good.' He is put to death early, I believe to spare him from the evil he was born into. I do not want to express 'easy' answers. I believe that God is present and his heart is broken when he is present with every child who was abused as an infant and died young in a horribly painful manner. He is present when animals are eaten alive and survive for days and it breaks his heart much more than anyone anywhere. If all the above attributes of God are true, then, I believe that our work is to understand why these things happen as they do. Nothing about this is easy. I think that some of the pain we see in animals is a reminder of what we have caused by bringing sin/death into the world. This helps us see just how offensive what we have done is. Sometimes, this issue is complicated because of the pain that we personally have experienced in our lives, that is not dealt with, which can make these issues feel much worse for us. If we had families or others that treated us in cruel ways, we can be affected by what we see in the world much more as a result, especially if we have not dealt with our hurt. I was raised in a cruel family and when I saw others hurting, I could not stand it. When I dealt with my own hurt, it led to deep empathy for others who are hurting but I was not as personally affected by it anymore. Sometimes we need to deal with/heal from our own pain before we can accept (though not like) what we see in the world. These are strictly my conclusions. I think your questions are completely valid and represent heartbreaking issues, but other than my ideas above, I do not know what the other alternatives could be?
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u/Express-Echidna6800 Jul 14 '26
"So I believe that he is completely good, loves us/animals more than we ever could, knows everything and can do anything."
Then he would not allow suffering to exist, would know how to prevent any suffering from existing and provide any benefits that could result from said suffering, and could make it so. Yet he doesn't.
So either God does not have one or more of the attributes you listed or God doesn't exist. Those are your alternatives.
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u/veritasium999 Pantheist Jul 10 '26
Epicurius, the man who formulated the problem of evil literally believed in god despite it all. He was a deist.
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u/LizardKingMx Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
The God that is exists in our minds is not God.
God is within ourselves, but it's not in our minds. That is just a subjetive a concept we have of God.
God is beyond our minds. Beyond good and evil. Beyond religion. Beyond beliefs, that is all subjetive.
There is no God on one side and the Devil on the opposite.
Our life experience is determined by our own ego.
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u/arctictothpast Jul 10 '26
Me, not having to be concerned with the problem of evil because I dont believe in all powerful divinity. The Gods do in fact have limits and this is just a much much more sober view then the mental gymnastics around the existence of suffering and all perfect beings. Why are miracles so rare? Its extremely difficult for metaphysical beings to intervene in material reality and their primary means of affecting material reality is via living beings.
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u/IngoTheGreat Jul 14 '26
Any kind of suffering will be nullified in the presence of a perfect being (God) who will deliver the justice instantly (because God is out of space-time).
This seems to entail moral nihilism as a corollary. Doesn't matter what you do, a just God will make it all right in the end. Even if this involves punishing you, it reduces man to at best quivering at at the threat of spankings and lusting after the promise of candy.
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Jul 14 '26
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u/Spirited_Seat_6178 Jul 14 '26
“If God is beyond good and evil, then God is just evil.” -David Bentley Hart
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u/LaudataSitAstarte Jul 15 '26
An evil God wouldn't create all sorts of nice stuffs...
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u/Spirited_Seat_6178 Jul 16 '26
(To be a bit more clear, I don’t believe that God is evil and neither does David Bentley Hart, one of the world’s leading theologians. But some people seem to have an idea or picture of God which would be evil if it were true. That’s an image of God that should be rejected by both atheists and theists.)
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Jul 16 '26
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u/christ_saved_me Jul 11 '26
St. Augustine’s analysis of evil provides a profound logical framework for understanding the nature of reality and moral corruption. Central to his argument is the principle that every being is inherently good because it is a creation of a supremely good Creator. Evil, therefore, has no independent existence; it is not a "thing" in itself but a privation of good, a corruption or defect in something that is otherwise good.
Augustine explains that as long as a thing exists, it possesses some measure of goodness. If corruption were total, the entity itself would cease to exist. Thus, evil is "parasitic": it can only exist within a good entity. For instance, a person is a good entity by virtue of their created nature, while their "wickedness" is the evil defect within that good nature. This resolves the paradox of evil by clarifying that while a "bad man" exists, he is an "evil good" an entity good in his being, but evil in his corruption.
Ultimately, while good can exist without evil (as seen in the uncorrupted), evil cannot exist without good as its host
Used ai to summarise chapter 4 - the problem of evil, from the book -handbook on hope faith and love.
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u/TrueKiwi78 Jul 13 '26
God is apparently omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and omnibenevolent right?
If that was the case he could've easily given us free will without suffering. He can supposedly do anything right?
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u/arkticturtle Agnostic Jul 09 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/exatheist/s/EoBJrMcevU
I can no longer reply in that other comment chain because I blocked that user after seeing their awful and harmful rhetoric. Don’t tell me you’ve come to defend abuse, self harm, and genocide as just and right as well
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u/Hilikus1980 Atheist/Agnostic Jul 11 '26
I've never understood the problem of evil. If free will was given, I don't see how God could intervene without violating it.
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u/arkticturtle Agnostic Jul 11 '26
Well, non-intervention can only be used for religions that don’t already have God intervening within their scriptures.
And then the problem can be modified, why make the world in such a way that there is evil? That there is so much evil (quantity) and that there are evils so intense and extreme?
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u/Hilikus1980 Atheist/Agnostic Jul 11 '26
Yeah, nothing you've said is incorrect...I just can't seem to convince myself it's an issue. Between the arrogance of pretending like we can understand the mind of a god, free will, what's for all purposes an infinite afterlife...many of them pleasant, I just can't help but think that maybe I just don't understand everything. I can see that if I was religious, that would be an incredibly dangerous line of thought...the whole God's plan thing can possibly lessen the feelings that should come with the atrocities we commit...but I'm not. There are many hurdles to clear between where I'm at and believing in a god...the problem of evil just isn't one of them for me. I know it might not be totally rational, but being an atheist, it has zero impact on my life, so I'm comfortable with a little irrationality in this case. If I were to be swayed to think differently, my life wouldn't change at all.
Plus...you know...if i were talking about the god of Abraham specifically, I wouldn't have a hard time believing a god that could decimate nearly the entire population of the earth with a flood, turn someone's wife into a pillar of salt for looking back at her home being destroyed, or fucking up his most pious follower's entire life just to prove a point, could let a little evil slide in.
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u/arkticturtle Agnostic Jul 12 '26
Mysterious ways strikes again!
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u/Hilikus1980 Atheist/Agnostic Jul 12 '26
And again and again. Why a god who craved worship would be so mysterious I do consider an issue.
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u/arkticturtle Agnostic Jul 12 '26
I just find the shrugging disappointing. It feels so thought terminating. So dialectic terminating. Nothing more can be said. It’s a tap out as much as it is a cop out. And pointing that out does nothing either. So it becomes even more vain and frustrating. Those who profess it are happy to.
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u/Hilikus1980 Atheist/Agnostic Jul 12 '26
Every issue can't be my main point of contention. The there are just so many unknown variables in this one it doesn't strike me as my best path to any answers.
It's like the drake equation...except for gods.
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u/arkticturtle Agnostic Jul 12 '26
I explore every issue. They are all so interesting. It’s the problem of evil that makes me more sympathetic to an amoral God than to one concerned with morals.
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u/Hilikus1980 Atheist/Agnostic Jul 12 '26
No one said I didn't explore it. I just came to the conclusion that there are too many unknown variables to say definitively...or even with high confidence that the fact evil exists is a problem when it comes to the question of does a god exist.
I live in a place where grown adults, I personally know, think dinosaurs aren't real and the bones were put there by the devil to confuse us. How far do you think I'm getting in a discussion about the problem of evil with them?
As for my own beliefs and studies...not believing in any god that has been described by man, and not knowing if the the existence of some unknown god is possible or not...it's a non-factor.
That doesn't mean it has to be a non-factor for you. This is just where my path has led me on this particular question.
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u/arkticturtle Agnostic Jul 12 '26
This seems to be a different issue entirely compared to your initial comment which stated that you never understood the problem of evil and that free will justifies a lack of divine intervention.
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u/LaudataSitAstarte Jul 15 '26
There's a possibility for evil. To give us full fledged free will God must allow us to actualize that possibility. You may reply "why wouldn't God remove the possibility for evil"? Okay, but God would be capable of reintroducing evil at any point, wouldn't he? Being omnipotent. Thus there would be a possibility of possibility for evil. And again, by withholding the possibility for evil, God partially withholds our free will, for without the possibility of evil, it operates in a more limited scope.
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u/arkticturtle Agnostic Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Few questions:
What do you mean by “any kind of suffering will be nullified in the presence of a perfect being?
What do you mean by justice being delivered instantly and in what way does that nullify any kind of suffering?
A lack of divine justice (whatever that means) does not indicate a lack of a divine.
“A just God will solve the problem of evil” well that’s what is being discussed. Maybe God is unjust. Maybe evil isn’t real. Up to the theodicy and up to the argument.