crash course philosophy is brought to
you by Squarespace
Squarespace with the world why is the
sky blue which came first orange the
color or orange the fruit and why is
c-3po afraid of everything
like who decided it was a good idea to
teach a droid to experience fear there
are some questions that we ask ourselves
either as kids or adults or both they're
questions about weird everyday things
and they're weird because most of us
don't know the answers to them offhand
but most of the time those questions
turn out to be pretty answerable like
for the ones I just mentioned the short
answers are because of the way photons
interact with molecules in the
atmosphere the fruit and because that's
what George Lucas wanted maybe because
three pears protocol droid and they need
to be able to relate to humans though he
could stand to turn his fear settings
down a notch now as you know
philosophers have a soft spot for
questions that can never be answered
most of the time these puzzles make for
great thought experiments tests of our
skills in logic and argument but there
are some questions whose very lack of an
answer can be downright troubling unlike
the occasional fluke of physics or a bit
of Star Wars trivia there's a part of us
that really wants or even needs to have
an answer to these things
the past month or so we've been
exploring the philosophy of religion and
we've been doing it mainly from a
theistic perspective looking into
arguments that justify belief in God but
one of the most persistent challenges to
God's existence is also the root of one
of the most asked but least answerable
questions that we as thinking beings
face why is there evil
evil comes in many forms and likewise
for philosophers poses many problems
especially visa vie the existence of God
first there's what's known as the
logical problem of evil like all
rational people theists can't help but
acknowledge that the world is full of
evil and here we're understanding evil
to be all manner of bad stuff like not
just Hitler Darth Vader or Moriarty it's
everything the vast spectrum of badness
from stubbed toes to plagues and
everything in between theists and
atheists both agree that evil exists in
this way but they disagree about the
next part many theists believe in an
omniscient omnipotent and
omni-benevolent God but atheists argue
that this creates a contradiction a set
of beliefs that can't all be true at the
same time because evil is bad right
whether it's stubbed toes or genocide or
paper cuts or epidemics so if there's
really an all-knowing God out there he
knows about all the evil he might even
know about it before it happens and if
he's all-powerful he could stop it and
if he's all good then he would want to
stop it and yet he doesn't the evil
continues philosophically rational
people shouldn't hold inconsistent
beliefs so atheists argue that you're
going to have to give something up and
the thing to give up is God some theists
however take a different route they
choose to give up one or more divine
attributes they argued that maybe God
isn't powerful enough to stop evil or
maybe he's not knowledgeable enough to
know about it or maybe he's not even
good enough to care about stopping it
that might sound weird to some of you
but if you've ever heard someone say
that God is envious or petty or jealous
that's basically what they're doing
they're acknowledging the possibility
that God is not actually good if you've
ever checked out the Old Testament there
is a God there who has some anger issues
one who's not at all opposed to wiping
out entire populations just because of
some bad behavior still despite this
scriptural evidence many theists are
committed to God's
omnitrixes stuck with a problem they
have to resolve the logical problem of
evil and find some way to explain why
God would allow evil into the world and
if you can do that then you are
presenting what is known as a theodicy a
theodicy is an attempt to show that the
existence of evil doesn't rule out the
possibility of God's existence yes this
is such a big deal that there's a word
for it and the most popular theodicy is
called the free will defense this
argument holds that God maximized the
goodness in the world by creating free
beings and being free means that we have
the choice to do evil
things a choice that some of us exercise
sis the Odyssey says that God doesn't
create evil but evil can't be avoided
without depriving us of our freedom and
a world without freedom would be a worse
place overall
this explanation preserves God's
goodness because he created the best
possible world and also preserves his
omnipotence and omniscience because
although he does know about evil and
could stop it he has a good reason not
to to ensure our freedom the problem is
the free will defense only really
addresses what's known as moral evil or
the evil committed on purpose by humans
now we're certainly responsible for a
lot of bad stuff but you can't blame us
for everything we can't be held
responsible for the fact that the plates
of the earth sometimes shift causing
destructive earthquakes or that a storm
might knock a tree over that falls out
of someone's house this type of evil the
stuff that we're not responsible for is
called natural evil and the freewill
defense can't resolve natural evil
religion is one of those philosophical
issues that can make it hard for us to
consider anything objectively that's
where fiction comes in handy because
fictional stories can let us see how
hypothetical people deal with
hypothetical situations and without in
mind let's go to the thought-bubble for
some flash philosophy let's consider the
case of Ivan a good russian who wants to
break up with God and the novel The
Brothers Karamazov 19th century Russian
writer Fyodor Dostoevsky presents us
with Ivan a man who claims to believe in
God but Ivan finds the fact that God
allows evil to exist to be so
unforgivable that he decides worshipping
such a God would be just unconscionable
Ivan goes so far as to declare that he
is returning his ticket to heaven if the
same God who allows evil particularly
the suffering and death of children is
also saving a cozy place in paradise for
Ivan well Ivan wants nothing to do with
it so his way out of the problem of evil
is to deny God's goodness and to
conclude that a bad God is not only
unworthy of his worship he's also not
someone Ivan wants to spend eternity
with it's like the ultimate unfriending
now some readers have found Ivan's
decision to be Noble and full of
integrity after all if you really think
God is letting all of this bad stuff
happen why would you want to be on his
team but other people think Ivan is
being irrational why condemn yourself to
an eternity in hell on principle for
theists it's another question that
doesn't have an easy answer
thanks thought-bubble now unlike Ivan a
lot of people aren't willing to give up
their ticket to heaven so they need to
work on a way to keep
and worshipping God even though evil is
still a thing one way to do that is to
argue that good can't exist without its
opposites the idea here is that you
can't understand the concept of pleasure
without pain we don't know what it feels
like to be warm if we haven't been cold
we can't understand the goodness of
filling our bellies if we've never been
hungry but there's also another way
though it involves a little more work on
your part 20th century English
philosopher of religion John hick
offered what's known as the soul making
theodicy unlike the traditional view
that God created a perfect world which
we ruined through our own poor choices
hick argued that God deliberately
creates us unfinished and our earthly
lives are designed to toughen us up in a
sense kind of like boot camp the
harshness of life Hicks said gives us a
robust texture and character that
wouldn't be possible without an
imperfect world take said that were not
just God's little pets and he's not our
benevolent owner whose sole job is to
keep us in a safe comfortable
environment instead he wants to build us
to train us into a particular kind of
being so we need an environment that
suited to this sort of growth that he
wants the sort that this world makes
possible a lot of people find these and
other theodicies to be pretty compelling
however the problem of evil actually
goes a step deeper what we've been
talking about so far is the logical
problem of evil this problem can be
resolved if we can explain why there's
evil but there's also the evidential
problem of evil this problem points out
that we might be able to explain why
evil exists but we still can't explain
why there's so much evil in the world
for instance let's say that it's true
that we really do need evil in order to
understand goodness in that case why
can't we understand the contrast through
some sort of low-level evil like paper
cuts and head Colton having to work
straight through our lunch hour every
now and then I mean slow painful deaths
from cancer and city destroying
hurricanes they don't really add
anything valuable to our understanding
of goodness do they if God were truly
good and if a negative contrast were
really needed in order for us to
understand the goodness of the world
then why wouldn't he just give us the
very minimum dosage of necessary evil to
achieve that goal a counter-argument
might suggest that there's always a good
that corresponds to and is proportionate
to any evil but empirically such
goodness is really hard to find what
good for example could possibly
correspond to the horror
of a genocide in cases like this Hicks
soul making doesn't seem to cut it you
can't really argue that whatever doesn't
kill us makes us stronger because
sometimes evil does kill us a lot of us
and sometimes it kills us before we have
a chance to grow and learn from the
suffering we've endured despite these
and other philosophical sticking points
a lot of people have found a theodicy
that satisfies them one that they
believe reconciles the apparent evil in
the world with God's existence others
find all of these theodicies to be
flawed and they reject God's Omni nature
preserving their belief in God by
finding him to be less than perfectly
powerful or knowledgeable or good still
others are convinced that the evil in
the world is simply incompatible with
the existence of a god or at least any
God worth worshiping wherever you end up
this is a problem that needs to be
grappled with and you'll probably be
thinking about it long after this lesson
has ended after all today we have
considered the biggest problem in theism
the problem of evil we've thought about
different theodicies or ways that we
might reconcile the existence of evil
and the existence of God and we've
explored whether those responses are
sufficient
next time we'll consider what kinds of
justification we need to have for our
religious beliefs this episode of crash
course philosophy is made possible by
Squarespace Squarespace is a way to
create a website blog or online store
for you and your ideas
Squarespace features a user-friendly
interface custom templates and 24/7
customer support
try squarespace at squarespace.com slash
crash course for a special offer
Squarespace share your passion with the
world crash course philosophy is
produced in association with PBS Digital
Studios you can head over to their
channel check out amazing shows like PBS
idea channel the Chatterbox
and PBS space time this episode of crash
course was filmed in the doctor Cheryl C
Kinney crash course studio with the help
of all of these awesome people and their
equally fantastic graphics team is
thought cafe