The Problem of Evil, Suffering, and the Design Argument

The Logical Problem of Evil

The logical problem of evil holds that if God is all-good, then evil should not exist. One might argue that evil is a creation of man and that God cannot prevent it — yet God, being omnipotent and therefore by definition capable of accomplishing all things, should be able to prevent, if not destroy, evil. Either God is not all-good, or He is not all-powerful. Alternatively, some other reason must exist to explain the coexistence of God and evil.

As David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion vividly expresses through the character of Philo:

"The whole earth is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want stimulate the strong and courageous; fear, anxiety, terror agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the newborn infant and to its wretched parent; weakness, impotence, distress attend each stage of that life, and it is at last finished in agony and horror." (Hume, 2006, p. 55)

If the world had an omnipotent and compassionate God ruling it, the very existence of evil implies a contradiction. God must be either omnipotent or compassionate, or suffering must not exist. Cleanthes considers the universe to be harmonious and structured, but a brief glimpse at the world reveals it to be a place filled with misery and evil.

Hick's Soul-Making Theodicy

The universe, as Philo elaborates, is a machine in which each creature fights for survival — a race for life determined, as Darwin would put it, by the survival of the fittest. Here, happiness is not the goal; rather, there is a ceaseless struggle of ecosystem against ecosystem. Given the amount of misery that exists in the world, it is difficult to conclude that an infinitely wise, powerful, and compassionate God controls it. The design of the universe suggests otherwise. At best, we can deduce that God is morally neutral.

John Hick's (1977) response to the problem of evil is that God is both all-powerful and all-good, and that it is precisely because of His goodness that He created us and placed us in a world where evil serves as a challenge for "soul-making." In other words, the difficulties and suffering inherent in the universe impel us to grow, and we possess the free will to determine whether we use that suffering for our spiritual development:

"The value-judgment that is implicitly being invoked here is that one who has attained to goodness by meeting and eventually mastering temptation, and thus by rightly making responsible choices in concrete situations, is good in a richer and more valuable sense than would be the one created ab initio in a state either of innocence or of virtue." (Hick, 1977, p. 255)

Challenges to the Soul-Making Argument

Suffering, in other words, makes us better and stronger human beings. The fact that the world is designed to include suffering serves only to strengthen us, and this actually supports the argument of intelligent design rather than undermining it. God's plan incorporates suffering as a vehicle for spiritual growth.

There are significant arguments against Hick's reasoning. First, suffering is not confined to human beings — animals suffer too. How can their pain be justified as serving spiritual growth? And how does one justify suffering inflicted upon vulnerable humans such as infants, or people so severely ill that they have lost all capacity for consciousness? Lacking the intellectual and volitional capacities required for moral development, how can such beings grow through their suffering?

Second, the game of soul-making does not appear to be played equitably. Some people die young before they have a chance to use their suffering for growth. Others endure suffering so great that it destroys rather than builds — obliterating the very faculties or traits necessary for moral development. Still others seem to experience no significant suffering at all, enjoying an unmitigated life of pleasure and hedonism. Hick's soul-making argument, therefore, appears fundamentally flawed when tested against the actual distribution of suffering in the world.

The Design Argument

This position does not resolve the logical contradiction so much as it relocates it beyond the boundary of human reason. It acknowledges the limits of human understanding when applied to a being that, by definition, transcends those limits. Whether this constitutes a satisfying philosophical answer or a concession to mystery is a question each thinker must weigh for themselves.

Cleanthes argues that God's existence can be deduced from the intricate design of the universe. Just as a machine, with its evident complexity, indicates that it was fashioned by an intelligent mind, so too does the universe indicate — through its complex order and beauty — the existence of an intelligent designer. Philo refutes this argument by demonstrating that the analogy is faulty. The universe cannot be compared to a machine; it is an entirely different type of entity, and no valid comparison can therefore be drawn. Moreover, the universe and machines are not independent entities of the same order: the universe exists as a general whole, whereas a machine is a component of the universe. In this respect, too, the analogy fails.

Furthermore, the "order" we observe in the world is produced by generation and vegetation — processes very different from the purposefully designed order and intention that goes into constructing a machine. Such natural order may not necessarily be caused by intelligent design. Finally, to claim that something was created requires us to observe cause and effect. Here, however, the cause (God) and the effect (the universe) are so wholly distinct that we have never seen, and can never see, one as having been clearly produced by the other. There is, therefore, no certain way of knowing that intelligent design produced the universe.

Conclusion

Philo's arguments against the design analogy, with the exception of the last, seem acute and valid. Regarding the last, we can challenge it by demonstrating that God is only described in human terms so that we can understand Him. Because we need to describe God in order to discuss Him, we use the term "mind" as an adjective while simultaneously acknowledging that God, being utterly spiritual, does not possess that physical organ. Language about God is necessarily analogical, not literal — a recognition that has long been central to theological discourse and that sets appropriate limits on what philosophical argument alone can establish.