We have been trying to understand the “Problem of Evil” and see what people have said about the question of why the all-powerful and all-loving Creator, if we believe He exists, allows pain and suffering to happen in this world. We discussed the Free-Will defense, the Soul-Making defense, the idea of Theistic Evolution, the first sin, and the fact that Christianity not only face suffering head-on but also promises hope beyond suffering.
Now we are going to discuss another side of the Problem of Evil. Instead of questioning God why Evil exists, we can see that Evil actually points to the existence of a good God!
What do we really mean by “Evil” in the phrase “Problem of Evil”? In our discussion over the last couple months, we are making the word “Evil” synonymous with “pain and suffering”. We asked why pain and suffering happens in this world if the Creator of the world is all-powerful and good. However, we all know that “Evil” also has another meaning. When we describe an intention as “evil”, we mean an intention that serves a bad purpose. It may aim at harming innocent people such as robbing their possession, hurting their bodies, or even kidnapping or committing horrible crimes against them. An “evil” act is the action that harms people.
We reject “evil” in either sense as discussed above. We want to avoid it, and we do not want to see that happen. If we say that someone did something evil, we are saying that what that person did was not right. The person should not have done it. Whatever that person did should have been stopped or forbidden. If we say something evil happening to a person, we are saying that should not have happened. A plane accident happened a few weeks ago in Seattle. Sixty-four people were killed. Everyone would agree that it is bad. It should have been avoided. It should not have happened.
But why do we think or feel that what the bad person did was not right and should not be done, or that tragedy should not have happened to anyone? We get a feeling that it is obviously true that evil actions should be all stopped, and nothing evil should happen to anyone in the world. But why do we feel that way?
Is it just a personal preference? Probably not. When a bad person plans to kidnap a kid and takes the kid away from the parents, I believe everyone would call that evil. Similarly, no one would agree that it is okay for the plane accident to happen, and those sixty-four people are not worthy of living their lives! It seems that we as humans consciously or unconsciously have a kind of universal agreement that tells us what is good and what is evil.
But why do we have such a universal agreement? Are we not just product of random collision of mindless particles, and our bodies the result of blind evolution?
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