Theology Matters - Questions about Evil (Part 1)

This is from this Medium comment section.

[Swagmoney] //I agree, no one orders their goal to be evil. I do not think there is a person out there that would pursue a goal that they would concede is evil.//

[PSB] Excellent! You are on the same page as Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (“The good is that which all desire.”)

//I think your argument would make sense from a solely theological perspective, but that would be more convincing to a theist who is struggling with the problem of evil. //

It is a metaphysical point, not a religious point.

Clearly, the metaphysics dovetail with some religious traditions, but not with others. For example, Calvinists, Muslims, and voluntarists might have a metaphysics more focused on arbitrary will. I haven’t done the research, but a Calvinist who believes that humans are totally depraved may think that people do will evil.

Don’t know.

In any event, the Aristotelian thesis makes sense because it holds together as a metaphysical system.

//As an atheist I would honestly instantly reject evil being without a cause, as would much of psychological science, effectively. //

In order to have a coherent conversation with an atheist, I would need you to provide a coherent definition of “evil.” If “evil” means “things that I (the atheist) don’t like,” then we can’t have a conversation because we would be discussing your tastes, which I have no interest in doing.

//When psychology finds that the worst child-abusers likely did that because they themselves were abused as children, it does not absolve them of their wrongdoing. It is an important component of understanding prevention in the future.//

But psychology can make no such claim regarding causation. It might show correlation or it may provide a “just so” story, but causation is beyond psychology, which is easily demonstrated by the fact that there are victims who do not become abusers. What is the cause of their non-abusive behavior? How about abusers who were not abused? Things are a little more complicated because people are not machines that give fixed responses under identical stimuli.

Further, while an explanation may not absolve, it certainly mitigates. We see this in legal proceedings all the time.

//I am curious what you would propose we do about these evils if you would proclaim that they have no cause?//

Remember how I defined evil: evil is the absence of a proper good. The answer would therefore be to fill up the absence with the proper good – training, habituation, punishment, character formation, and hope that these things work.

Aristotelianism is very pragmatic.

//Your 2nd point feels like a bit of a “gotcha,” it’s not really falsifiable. //

Don’t confuse metaphysics with science. Science deals with the physical world and sets the standard at “falsifiability” according to Popper. Metaphysics deals with “being” and the logical ideas that we can extrapolate from the common features of “being.”

//Maybe He didn’t limit it, and if He didn’t, why not?//

Perhaps you should deal with my point first?

How do you know that God did not limit human capacity for evil, such as by establishing the moral scheme that actions are ordered to the good?

You’ve acknowledged that you agree that actions are ordered to the perceived good; where do you think that comes from?

// Since you seem to be willing to concede that it is not impossible that He has limited it, therefore it wouldn’t be necessarily wrong or contradictory to Christian beliefs?//

Obviously, we are limited in our ability to commit evil. That’s just a fact. You can’t point your finger at someone and wish them out of existence, which would be the greatest evil because it would imply the their being was not good as being.

What you are saying is, why didn’t God limit our capacity to commit evil even more than he did limit it?

My answer is from St. Thomas and is that the good of the order of existence is greater than any of its parts. The good of the order of existence includes things that are causally determined, things that have intellect and to that extent are relatively causally free but embodied and to a certain extent not free, and things that are not embodied and are far freer than embodied beings with intellect. As I suggested, it may not be possible to have a human being without allowing the kind of freedom we have to do the kind of evil we are capable of doing.

If you can make a counter-argument about how we can be human but not have the causal freedom and power we have, please share.

//Or would you only be willing to argue on that point from the perspective that He did limit it, but not from a perspective of Him not limiting it despite it being okay for Him to do so in your framework?//

As my answer above indicates, I think it is both/and, not either/or.

//I feel like my prior point applies to your third argument as well. Your arguments seem a bit more applicable to a confused or concern believer, but not convincing to a non-believer. I am curious how you would respond to that.//

As I said, I would have to know what you mean by “evil” and where you come up with your intuition that there is such a thing as “evil” in an atheistic universe.

It doesn’t seem like there should be such a thing. If evil is the absence of a proper good, this implies an objective standard of judgment. I judge that this knife should have the virtue of sharpness and that if it is not sharp, it is an evil knife because it lacks a proper virtue, but who decides that people should not abuse children? If it is a matter of taste, like arguing which is better, chocolate or vanilla, where is the conversation going to go?

Many discussions with atheists go in that direction, unfortunately. Atheists love to demand explanations for evil, but dissolve the question of evil when their back is against the wall.

The further point is that we judge the particular conclusions of a metaphysical system by how well the entire system answers questions. Many atheists hold to an ad hoc metaphysics. They can do well answering a particular question, but the system collapses in contradiction when pressure is applied.

For example, remember David Hume said, and most atheists agree, we can’t conclude an ought from an is, but the whole question of evil is about “oughts,” not “is.”

For example, if you say that an adult molested that child, I can say coherently, “That’s evil! An adult ought not do that!”

For some atheists – e.g., David Hume – the fact that an adult molested a child is a fact, a datum. The most he can say is something like, “I don’t approve of that, and I feel that you should feel the same way I feel.”

Mmm’kay, but that’s rather weak.

//Just would like to add a note that I do enjoy honest and good faith debate, and that is the intention I am coming from. I have no intention of offending or being ignorant/bad faith at any point and you can feel free to disengage at any time. Debate is a personal hobby of mine :) I appreciate your engagement with me so far//

I am a lawyer. I get paid to debate.

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Here is my prior response for context:

/This is a strong point, but I would find it more agreeable if it was not so malicious for some people. While I agree that it is critical for humans to have free will, why does God have it be the case that some people will feel naturally inclined to be violent, or otherwise sinful? Along the same lines, what is the greater good of having some people be inclined to sexually harm women or children?//

The first part of your response was good.

This part, though, is problematic.

Again, no one orders their goal to evil; everyone orders their goal to a perceived good.

So, the malicious racists and the women-abusing men would not, and do not, say, I did this because I am evil and want to cause evil. Rather, they will offer some explanation that sounds a lot like your motivations when you give to an orphanage.

Are they right in their judgment?

Not at all. They are disordered in their understanding.

Why does God allow this?

Well, originally, He gave humans grace that perfected nature and provided rational control over desire, but even with that prevenient grace, humans still misjudged and sinned.

Why did that happen?

First, we don’t know and never will know. Go read my review of Dionysius. Evil is ultimately “not a being.” Since it is not a being, it has no existence, i.e., it is the space where existence should be. Since it has no existence, it has no cause. It’s “cause” is the absence of a cause that should be.

To understand evil would be to trivialize evil. If evil has a cause, then we can say now we understand why the rapist rapes, and then the rape becomes more banal, e.g., “Oh, it’s because he didn’t have enough magnesium in his system.” Hitler killed six million Jews because he didn’t get enough hugs as a child; who can blame him?

Second, maybe God does limit human propensity for evil. Maybe there are worse things possible than we can imagine.

Third, maybe the good of an existence that permits the evil we see - the rapes and murders - outweighs the evil we see. For example, any existence that involves beings that move about in a world of sharp edges and causal capabilities is a world where some suffering will necessarily exist. The way to avoid that suffeing would be to eliminate movement, sharp edges, and causal possibilities. Perhaps if we were organisms rooted in warm shallow seas that reproduced by fission, we would not see the evils we see (but we’d see other evils, perhaps.)

But if that was the case, then would we be human?

Perhaps, the evils we see come from being human, and being human in its totality outweighs the evil suffered by any person.

Finally, of course, God is not limited to this finite lifetime to make things balance out. We have a sense that all tears will be wiped away ultimately. That intuition has to be addressed in weighing the balance.