Haiti and the Problem of Evil

The problem is at least as old as monotheism and may even be older. Many pagan religions side-stepped the problem altogether by positing capricious rather than just gods. The so-called Abrahamic faiths cannot escape the problem, however, as their god is purportedly righteous and perfectly so. I speak, of course, of the Problem of Evil. The first formal expression of the problem is traditionally (though perhaps incorrectly) ascribed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus and goes something like this:

1. If a perfectly good god exists, then evil does not.
2. There is evil in the world.
3. Therefore, a perfectly good god does not exist.

Or, put a little more thoroughly:

1. God exists.
2. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.
3. A perfectly good being would want to prevent all evils.
4. An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence.
5. An omnipotent being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence and has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence.
6. A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil.
7. If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being, then no evil exists.
8. Evil exists (logical contradiction).

Natural disasters, such as the recent earthquake in Haiti, often do, and should, bring this problem to the fore for anyone with even the slightest of philosophical leanings. Natural disasters aren’t just evil, after all, they represent random evil on a truly massive scale; evil that affects the virtuous as well as the vicious and everyone in between.

Obviously, theologians the world over have been wrestling with this problem since long before the cataclysm in Haiti. (Conversely, Haitians have been wrestling with crushing poverty since long before the earthquake.) Some theologians, such as the fundamentalist Christian cleric Pat Robertson, embrace an angry version of god who visits “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” (Exodus 20:5) While such a god is scriptural, it lacks justice and so most theologians look to other solutions. The quest to resolve the contradiction of evil in a god-governed universe is often called theodicy¹.

In reflecting on this matter in a recent Newsweek column, Lisa Miller wrote:

Theodicy remains the most powerful tool in the atheist’s kit, however, and many a believer has turned away from God over the suffering of innocents. [Bart] Ehrman [a Bible scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] did. After a lifetime as a Christian, “I just got to a point where I couldn’t explain how something like this could happen, if there’s a powerful and loving God in charge of the world. It’s a very old problem, and there are a lot of answers, but I don’t think any of them work.”

The challenge, then, to all believers is to examine the problem and the answers and to ask, “Do any of them work?”