In the last couple of decades, the most prominent argument from evil is base on the idea that God couldn’t allow a gratuitous evil. Here is one way to define a gratuitous evil, paraphrasing Rowe:
- E is gratuitous if and only if there is no greater or equal good G that is only obtainable by God if God permits E or something equal or worse.
(For simplicity, I am taking the prevention of an evil as itself a good.)
By (1), if E is any earthly evil, it’s too easy to show that for all we know E is not gratuitous.
To see this, observe that for all we know, the persons suffering from E are compensated in an afterlife by God bestowing on them a greater good G0. Now let G be the good of receiving G0 in compensation from God for suffering E. Then G is a good, and is at least as good as G0 itself. But G0 is greater in magnitude than E. Thus, G is greater than E. Moreover, God’s permitting E is a necessary condition for God’s compensating someone for suffering E, since God cannot compensate someone for something that didn’t happen. Therefore, G is obtainable by God only if God permits E.
So we don’t want to go for (1), since it’s too easy to find goods that are only obtainable given E if there is an afterlife.
The problem with this example is that while it is impossible for God to give G0 as compensation for E without E, God can give G0 gratuitously, and that seems to be just as good as giving it as compensation. The atheist who wants to argue for the existence of God should modify (1) as follows:
- E is gratuitous if and only if there is no greater or equal good G such that something at least as good as G is only obtainable by God if God permits E or something equal or worse.
But given (2), it is implausible to say that God couldn’t allow a gratuitous evil. Consider a case where Alice makes a slightly mean joke at Bob’s expense. She then repents, and asks Bob for forgiveness, who forgives. It is easy to imagine that the value of the repentance and forgiveness is greater than the disvalue of the joke, but just as the joke was a minor evil, the repentance and forgiveness are minor goods. It seems intuitively clear that the case of Alice’s slightly mean joke does not require any theodicy beyond what has just been said. Yet Alice’s joke appears to be a gratuitous evil according to (2).
For the goods in the previous paragraph are all minor goods. But God could create a major good without permitting any evil at all. For instance, God could create an infinite number of happy mathematicians who eternally enjoy the search for truth and who do not have the freedom to choose between good and evil, but must do good. That infinity of happy mathematicians would be a major good. But surely any minor good is less than any major good. Thus, if we let G be the minor goods of repentance and forgiveness in the previous paragraph, then something greater than G—namely, the infinite number of happy mathematicians—is obtainable by God without any evil at all. And hence the story in the previous paragraph isn’t enough to provide a theodicy, if (2) is the right account of gratuitous evils.
Maybe the solution is a very strong doctrine of incommensurability, on which the good of the infinitely many mathematicians is incommensurable with the goods of repentance and forgiveness even when the latter two are minor. But given such a strong doctrine of incommensurability, we can go back to my original compensation story. The problem I saw with that original story is that God could give G0 gratuitously and not as compensation, and I said that that would be at least as good. But given a strong doctrine of incommensurability, giving G0 gratuitously will be incommensurable with giving G0 as compensation for E. And, plausibly, any good that isn’t and instance of compensating for E or something at least as bad will be incommensurable with the good of compensating for E with G0. Thus, mere compensation will suffice for theodicy.
I am not comfortable with saying that mere compensation suffices for theodicy. But there is something to this idea.
On reflection, probably the best way to define gratuitous evil is not with regard to goods and the like, but with regard to moral reasons. An evil is gratuitous iff God would have decisive moral reason not to allow it. Then it's trivial that a morally perfect God cannot coexist with gratuitous evil.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I can agree that repentance and forgiveness are ever minor. I think it was St. Augustine who said that bringing one soul to repentance is a greater miracle than the creation of the universe.
ReplyDeleteIs this true if it is a repentance from something really minor, though?
ReplyDeleteRepentance and forgiveness are secondary goods. On their own, they are meaningless. Just like a fire-brigade is meaningless if there can't be any fires.
ReplyDeleteThat a good is secondary and dependent on some primary good does not make it a *lesser* good. The courage of fire-brigades may be a secondary good, but it could well be a *greater* good than primary goods like absence of fire.
ReplyDeleteI did not say 'lesser', I said 'meaningless'.
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