When Epicurus asked
“whence cometh evil?” if God exists (Hospers 310), he was giving voice to a
question that has long and continues to perplex humanity. Centuries down the
line, Dr. J. L. Mackie has taken up the mantle of thought in his essay “Evil
and Omnipotence” in which he argues that, given the fact that evil exists, the
theological premises that (a) God is omnipotent and (b) God is wholly good
cannot both possibly be true. While he weaves a convincing argument, I find
myself disagreeing with Mackie for three major reasons: first, I am troubled by
what I would describe as a rather aggressive methodology on his part which
evolves into a kind of circular reasoning; second, I believe his argument
against the “most important proposed solution” (208) – that of human agency
being evil’s true culprit – is fundamentally flawed; and third, should we choose to accept Mackie’s
aforementioned crucial rebuttal against the argument of free will as not flawed, we can then easily argue
that the three apparently contradictory statements (God is wholly good; God is
wholly powerful; evil exists) are not in fact discordant at all.
The first issue I take
with Mackie’s argument is this: while it comes off as an iron-clad argument,
the reality is that it is somewhat circular. I think most theologians and
everyday religious folk alike (myself included) would agree with Mackie that
the problem of evil cannot be solved without making some adjustments to the three
main propositions. Off the top of my head, in fact, I can think of a number of
religions into which are built rather different propositions: for example,
polytheistic religions, in which gods, not unlike humans, often have vices and
virtues, or ditheistic religions which propose two equally powerful opposing
forces. These formal institutions besides, many have tried to individually
better define the theistic position by modifying the notions of omnipotence and
omnibenevolence. While Mackie briefly acknowledges these “adequate solutions”
(201), he goes on to treat their proponents with suspicions of inconsistency.
He, moreover, unreasonably dismisses these adequate solutions for the entirety
of the rest of the paper, grappling instead with the central propositions that
he himself defines as “the essential core of the theistic position” (212). The
problem here is that, as aforementioned, many thinkers today have maintained a
theistic position precisely by altering this so-called “essential core.” Mackie
sets up a clearly contradictory set of statements, defines it as the “essential
core” of theism, then goes on to shut down all adequate opposing views as
either inconsistent or denying this “essential core.” I, for one, found myself
frustrated by this circularity.
But let us set aside our adequate solutions for now and
look at Mackie’s arguments proper – specifically (the one to which I most
object) his rebuttal against what he calls the “most important proposed
solution” to the problem of evil: that “evil is due to human free will” (208). Against
this defense, Mackie claims the following:
There
was open to [God] the…possibility of making beings who would act freely but
always go right. Clearly, his failure to avail himself of this possibility is
inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly good. (209)
I
think many of us intuitively sense this to be an invalid statement – rightly,
for Mackie creates a logical paradox: it is not logically possible for us to have free will and yet, by
predetermination, always and forever choose the morally good choice – there
must still exist the possibility of choosing the wrong choice. As an analogy, we
cannot logically praise a machine of doing the moral good of, say, purifying a
body of water if it was programmed to do as such: the machine does not freely
choose, and neither would humans, if God pre-determined that we should always
do the right thing. A world in which humans’ actions are both pre-determined
yet also determined by free will would thus not be a possible world. For God to
create such a world, he must be able to do the logically impossible – and here,
I believe, is where Mackie makes his greatest mistake: he focuses his essay on
those who believe that God, being omnipotent, must be able to accomplish and
create the logically impossible.
Earlier
in the paper, Mackie touches briefly on the idea of logical impossibility and
admits that the “interpretation of omnipotence [that it cannot accomplish the
logically impossible] may…be accepted as a modification of our original account
which does not reject anything that is essential to theism” (203). Even adding
that this is the “most common theistic
view” (203, emphasis mine), however, he quickly moves back to arguing
against his own definition of the “essential core of the theistic position”
which includes an omnipotent God that can accomplish the logically impossible.
In fact, it is on this notion of omnipotence that his entire final solution
rests, for without this definition, it would, as I’ve explained above, be impossible
for God to create a world where humans have free will yet cannot but choose the
morally good (thus countering his final rebuttal).
As Mackie, however, essentially
denies the notion that an omnipotent being is bound by logic, let me allow that
an omnipotent God could create the (apparently logically impossible) world in
which human beings are free to act and cannot ever choose a morally wrong
choice. In such a universe, in which God supersedes our understanding of logic
and sense – indeed, a universe in which “logic is the way in which God
arbitrarily chooses to think” (203) – I would argue that God can indeed be both
omnipotent and wholly good yet still allow “evil.” The apparent contradiction
that we encounter in dealing with the problem of evil does not mean that God
does not exist; it means that we have failed to understand what good and evil
are – they are beyond our logic, just as God’s omnipotent abilities can
accomplish the logically impossible. Thus, God is omnipotent and God is wholly
good. And evil exists – or does it? It is, finally, beyond our ability to even
guess.
SOURCES
Hospers, John. An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. 3rd
ed. Routledge, 1990. 310. Print.
Mackie, J. L. “Evil and
Omnipotence.” Mind 64.254 (1955):
200-12. Oxford University Press. Web.
17 Jan. 2016.
