The Problem of Evil
Why Would a Good God Create Suffering?

If God is all-powerful and all-good, it would have created a universe in the same way it created heaven: with free will for all, no suffering and no evil. But evil and suffering exist. Therefore God does not exist, is not all-powerful or is not benevolent (good). A theodicy is an attempt to explain why a good god would have created evil and suffering. The most popular defence is that it is so Humans could have free will. However the entire universe and the natural world is filled with suffering, violence and destruction so any Humanity-centric explanation does not seem to work.

On this page:

1. Introduction: A Fundamental Contradiction Between a Good God and Reality
2. A Venn Diagram: Absolute Good vs. Apparent Evil
3. The Creator of the Worst of All Possible Worlds: Is God Evil?
4. Christianity
5. Conclusion

1. Introduction: A Fundamental Contradiction Between a Good God and Reality

“The presence of evil and suffering in the world has even been argued by some philosophers from Epicurus (341-270BCE) to David Hume (1711-76CE) to cast doubt on the existence of God. Other more modern writers such as Freud and Marx sought to show that religion's explanations of the presence of evil and suffering were based on delusions.”

"The Phenomenon Of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen (1999) [Book Review]₁

“If God has a plan for the universe, which is implemented as part of his will, why does he not simply create a deterministic universe in which the goal of the plan is inevitable? Or better still create it with the plan achieved? [...] Is God free to prevent evil? If he is omnipotent, yes. Why then does he fail to do so? This devastating argument was deployed by David Hume: if the evil in the world is the intention of the Deity, then he is not benevolent. If the evil is contrary to his intention, he is not omnipotent. He cannot be both omnipotent and benevolent (as most religions claim).”

"God And The New Physics" by Paul Davies (1984)₂

The reasons that such contradictions appear between the existence of god and the existence of aspects of reality is because the whole idea of god is problematic. If there is no god, and if suffering and pain result from purely biological effects and the physical laws of the universe, with no underlying divine cause, the problem of evil disappears. There is no real "good" and "evil", there is just evolved life, struggling to survive in an uncaring universe.

2. A Venn Diagram: Absolute Good vs. Apparent Evil

If we, as fallible Human beings, are to attempt to be "good", and also what is good for God is not always what is good for us, it means God is not "absolutely good". If God is absolutely good, it cannot be that what is good for God is evil for us. It would then make evil good for us.

What is the point of us trying to judge evil from good, if the glorification of God is good, and yet it is also, sometimes, anti-Human? Violent, murderous events in the Christian Old Testament and Islamic Qur'an provide many occasions of the contradictory goodness of God's will. Isn't this the reasoning of evil itself - turning something good into something evil? Isn't that ultimate sin?

If the Bible appears to condone evil, the Bible is wrong. Otherwise we are inspired to do evil ourselves like so many before us. If something is Evil for us, we have to oppose it, whether it comes from God or not.

If God has created an area of crossover where evil for us is good for itself, why do we presume heaven will be any better? It could be far, far worse!

3. The Creator of the Worst of All Possible Worlds: Is God Evil?

But if there is a god, it is an evil god. The creation of quite so much suffering, disease, despair is a main indicator. The design of life itself seems evil. This is the conclusion of my page on the food chain and forms part of an argument used on my Satanism website:

“The main piece of evidence here is biological matter and the food chain. All life dies - all biological life decays, erodes, fades, becomes diseased and ill if it does not sustain itself. To sustain itself nearly all life, except the least living elements of life, kills and eats other life. If not this, then it consumes biological matter at the expense of other living beings; the fight for food is also a case of living beings being required to outdo each other merely to survive.

If life was created, and not simply the result of undirected unconscious evolution (as seems sensible), this is surely the worst possible way to have created life. It appears very much that life cannot survive without causing suffering for other life. A god could not have created a more vicious cycle if it tried: Tying the very existence of life with the necessary killing of other life is the work of an evil genius, not of an all-powerful and all-loving god, that could choose if it wanted to sustain all life immediately and forever with manna from heaven. But it seems such an all-powerful good god doesn't exist.”

"God Must Be Evil (If It Exists): 1.2. The Dominance of Death in Nature" by Vexen Crabtree (2003)

Some theologians state that this world - complete with suffering - is the "best of all possible worlds" that God could have created; resting on the assumptions that evil is necessary. But the existence of heaven - where angels sit, free of sin and never having existed on the Earth - it is clear that there is no necessary reason why beings will free will have to exist on earth and suffer before going to heaven. The very design of the life cycle, natural disasters and the cataclysms of the violent universe prove an opposite conclusion: creation is the worst of all possible worlds. The idea of the existence of a good creator god is refuted by the facts of the universe. Summarizing the main arguments that God is evil:

“

The existence of such large quantities of suffering, despair, pain, of natural disasters such as earthquakes, of the death of the unborn and the immense suffering of lovers & kind-hearted people means that god is evil and intentionally creates life in order to create suffering. That all life exists in a food chain means that life is completely tied to death, and such a barbaric biological cycle could only have been made by an evil god. Also, that such a god appears not to exist, or actively hides itself, is a source of confusion, conflict, war and stress and is again more likely the antics of an evil god. Given the state of the natural world, it is impossible that a good god exists. It is more likely that an evil god exists, but, it is sensible to assume that there is no god of either type. Even if there is not a god of either type, as the dominance of death and violence in the natural world, a result of nature being abused by life and not being designed for life, I think the evil symbol of Satan is the best representative of the state of reality and the universe, whether or not an actual evil god exists.

If God did exist and was evil, it would undoubtedly lie and tell everyone it was a good god and that it loved them. It would create maximum confusion by preaching multiple conflicting religions. It would create heaven and make it hard to get to in order to tease and torture people into making their own lives hell. As all of those things happen, if there is a God, it is doing the things an evil God would do!

Once I recognized and accepted this state of affairs and adequately called myself a Satanist, I could concentrate my life on happiness, love, stability and peace. Because I know and understand that death always wins, that life is temporary, I waste no time on short-term whims that reduce my quality of life, or of those around me, and I waste no time with spiritual pipe dreams. Recognizing Satan as the personified meta-figure of reality is self-affirming, life-affirming, positive, honest and clarifying.”

"God Must Be Evil (If It Exists): 5. Conclusion" by Vexen Crabtree (2003)

“Anyone who thinks of Satan as evil should consider all the men, women, children, and animals who have died because it was "God's will".”

"The Satanic Bible" by Anton LaVey (1969)

4. Christianity

Christianity has always struggled with the problem of evil. The most ancient forms of Christianity in the first century, before the Pauline Christianity that we known today became dominant, held a multitude of beliefs on why evil existed. Prof Bart Ehrman is one of the most qualified historians of early Christianity. In "Lost Christianities" he summarizes a few major different beliefs that the original Christians had about the source of evil:

• Some believed that there were two gods, a good god (Jehovah) and an evil one (Satan), and they were equal (like in Zoroastrianism, a slightly earlier religion)

• "others believed that this world had been created by a subordinate, ignorant divinity. (Why else would the world be filled with such misery and hardship?)"₃.

• "Yet other Christians thought it was worse than that, that this world was a cosmic mistake created by a malevolent divinity as a place of imprisonment, to trap humans and subject them to pain and suffering"₃.

5. Conclusion

To the present day, all theodicies have failed to explain why a good god would create evil, meaning that the existence of evil is simply incompatible with the existence of a good god. After thousands of years of life-consuming passion, weary theologians have not formulated a new answer to the problem of evil for a long time. The violence of the natural world, disease, the major catastrophes and chaotic destruction seen across the universe and the unsuitability of the vastness of reality for life all indicate that god is not concerned with life, and might actually even be evil. Failure to answer the problem of evil sheds continual doubt on the very foundations of theistic religions.

• "God Must Be Evil (If It Exists)" by Vexen Crabtree (2003)
• "The Food Chain" by Vexen Crabtree (2007)