The Problem of Evil and God's Moral Necessity

Plenty of arguments support God's existence. For example, the Cosmological Argument points to evidence in our universe of a beginning and a transcendent cause, while the Teleological Argument points to the design of biological life forms and physical systems. But the most difficult problem for many people, even Christians, to overcome is that of the Problem of Evil. It is perhaps the greatest intellectual challenge for skeptics and people in general. It claims that if an omnipotent (all-powerful) and omnibenevolent (all-loving) God truly existed, He would not permit so much pain and suffering in the world. A man walking home is beaten to death by a criminal who wanted to rob him. Human evils are one thing, and there doesn't seem to be an issue with God existing and man misusing his free will. But what about pain caused by natural disasters, diseases, violence in the animal kingdom, and parasites that are out of man's control?

Sometimes human evil and natural evil mix into one, such as famine caused by a dictatorship to control its population, or a government synthesizes a deadly virus and releases it to invoke international lockdown and control. Here, natural evils (famine and a pandemic) were caused by human decisions (withholding food supplies and releasing a deadly virus). I could go on and on with examples of suffering that seem pointless and undeserved, but the main point is this: With all the evil in the world, human or natural, deserved or not, meaningful or seemingly pointless, how could an all-powerful and all-loving God actually exist?

Responding To The Forms Of The Problem Of Evil

To begin analyzing the Problem of Evil, we must make some distinctions. First, it is crucial to distinguish the different forms of the Problem of Evil, because an incorrect response can destroy any credibility you may have on this problem. On one hand, you have an Intellectual Problem of Evil---that God and evil are strictly logically contradictory---so that if God exists, evil cannot exist too. This can be formulated as either an internal critique of Christianity that attacks certain premises and beliefs the Christian ought to hold; or an external critique that presents, or attacks, premises the Christian does not have to hold. On the other hand, the Emotional Problem of Evil concerns comforting those experiencing undeserved or seemingly pointless suffering, and it's a much harder hill to fight.

Distinguishing which type of argument a skeptic is making matters, since each has its own sufficient explanation and response. This is because if someone is going through a rough season or situation, the intellectual solution may seem cold and isolated from their circumstances (and may sound condescending)---likewise, to someone who is coming from a more abstract and intellectual approach, an emotional answer would seem to side-step the issue or be superficial. Thus, each form of the Problem of Evil has its own set of responses suited to whatever situation the recipient is in... And sometimes, a person may need a mix of intellectual answers and emotional comfort to come out victorious from their circumstances.

But one last point before we continue. That is, without God, an infinite and transcendent personal mind, no abstract set of philosophical axioms or categories can, in general, have an epistemic ground. What I mean is that without God, there is no logically good reason for believing evil or morals are actually real. This is because principles like moral goodness are unchanging and universally binding. Since our world is constantly changing and in flux, there is nowhere to ground them in the material world. If no infinite, transcendent, personal being grounds them, then they have no real meaning or overarching purpose either. Only a mind can ground moral virtues and values, and Christians call that mind God (more on this later).

So without further ado, let us tackle the first form of the Problem of Evil, the Intellectual Problem of Evil.

The Intellectual Problem Of Evil

William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland note that the intellectual problem of evil has taken many forms, each with its own name, such as the inductive problem, the logical problem, the evidential problem, and so on. Though no universally accepted terminology exists, they boil these down to two main categories of intellectual arguments. Those are either an Internal critique or an External critique. An internal critique is aimed at something within the Christian worldview that is supposedly at odds with the coexistence of God and evil. In contrast, an external critique focuses on premises or assumptions that a Christian does not have to hold, or, in other words, assumptions Christians don't necessarily accept, such as the assumption that all seemingly evil is actually gratuitous and meaningless. But a Christian doesn't have to believe this, because God can have morally sufficient reasons we simply cannot compute due to our finite limitations. The external critique essentially provides evidence and arguments against a Christian worldview.

For simplicity's sake, I will call the external and internal critiques the Internal and External Problems of Evil. Let us begin with the Internal Problem.

The Internal Problem Of Evil

This version of the Intellectual Problem can further (bear with me) take two forms: either as a Logical Problem or as a Probabilistic, sometimes called Evidential, Problem. The Logical Problem argues that God and evil cannot coexist, claiming a logical contradiction between them. There is no possible universe where God and evil can both exist at the same time. The Probabilistic Problem concedes that God and evil are not contradictory, but that the sheer amount of evil in the world deems God's existence unlikely.¹ The Logical Problem of Evil presents two main premises, the first being that "An omnipotent, omnibenevolent God exists" and the second premise "Evil exists." It then concludes that God cannot exist because these two premises contradict each other. This version goes back to Epicurus, and David Hume expanded on it and brought it into the mainstream. But today, Alvin Plantinga is the philosopher who has pushed hardest against the logical problem.

He distinguishes between what he calls a defense and theodicy. A defense seeks to show that the atheist has failed to carry their case that evil is incompatible with God, while a theodicy provides an account for why God may permit evil in the world. The proponent of the Logical Problem of Evil has a massive burden of proof. In other words, there is no logical contradiction between God's existence and evil; the skeptic would have to offer a positive reason supporting this, or assume a false premise they haven't revealed that frames it as such. As Moreland and Craig note, no such good reason has ever been offered, so they must have a hidden premise.

Behind this argument are two hidden premises that are inherently assumed: that since God is all-powerful, he can create any world he desires, and that if He is all-loving, then he would prefer a world without evil over a world with evil. God could have created a world where people always choose the morally right choices, without natural disasters, disease, or any evil. Keep in mind that the claim is not that these people would be puppets forced to always choose right, but that they genuinely exercise free will to choose good on their own terms. Since in every situation where someone has to choose, they have the possibility to choose the good, the argument goes, we can imagine a world where everyone always chooses the good continually, and since He is also all-loving, He would prefer one with no evil or suffering. But He chose a world with evil; therefore, He is evil by wanting his creatures to experience pain and suffering. David Hume summarized the problem as follows:

“Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”²

Alvin Plantinga responds to this logical problem with the free-will defense, arguing that if it is even possible that creatures have genuine libertarian free will, then the two assumptions the objector makes are not necessarily true. Logically speaking, the atheist needs those two assumptions to be necessarily true for them to claim that God and evil are logically contradictory. They essentially misunderstand what omnipotence means. If libertarian free will is even possible, then an omnipotent God can't necessarily create any possible world. God being omnipotent means He can create anything logically possible; He can't make a square circle, or a free-willed person who can only choose one possible outcome, and every time. When we make choices, we select from many options without external factors determining our choice. Say you go to Olive Garden and the waiter asks for your order. Do you see what I mean? If someone makes a choice, or forces someone to choose, that choice is no longer free in a libertarian sense. So if God grants human beings free will, He can't necessarily guarantee what they will choose to do. He may arrange situations or conditions, but He can never force someone to freely do something, because that is a logical contradiction. It's like a square circle.

This means some worlds are unrealistic, or unfeasible, for God to create, especially when certain preconditions apply to that world and its creatures. Just as when you consider what you are craving for lunch, the number of options you can pick from is limited; thus, choosing something outside those cravings and preferences is an unfeasible meal in that situation. So too, if God took into account, say, creaturely free will, then a world where free choice is removed is unfeasible given that precondition. If God wanted to create a universe with meaning, cause and effect would need to be in place, which would entail natural disasters brought on by natural processes, as well as forces outside of man's control. Or perhaps God wants humans to have libertarian free will, enabling a genuine logical opportunity to choose to partake in His love, which further entails being able to choose independently of what God desires is best for them, without guaranteeing they choose good. So God may be able to create all logically possible worlds. Still, when you take into account certain preconditions for the world He wants to create, the total number of worlds to actualize is invariably limited.

If I wanted a sandwich, there are a plethora of possible types I could choose to eat. Now say I want one with something sweet on it. I surely could make a ham sandwich, but my preference limits my feasible choices to those that have something sweet on them----ham not being one of them. So the number of feasible sandwiches for me to eat is limited to only a few options. As I add more conditions, say a fruity sweetness balanced by a more earthy nuttiness, my options narrow to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the only feasible sandwich for me given those conditions. Take another more practical example. Say you want to build a house, but you only have enough wood to make a small shed. The limitations of the amount of wood make building a three-story house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and the world's greatest mancave absolutely unfeasible. God wills with certain preconditions, and those limit the number of feasible worlds.

If you read my free e-book covering the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments, you can find more on this theological model for the Problem of Evil, called Molinism, and its similarities to the naturalistic cosmological origins model, Quantum Cosmology.³ This knowledge of all feasible worlds in Molinism is called God's Divine Middle Knowledge----where, once God has set preconditions, so to speak, the number of feasible or realistic worlds out of the total purely logically possible worlds to create that logically cohere to those conditions is limited. Suppose that in every world where God creates humans with free will, some of them will refuse to choose the good, but go off on their own as their own moral "gods." If so, then it is not God who creates evil, but humans who create it out of their own use of their free will. When we view human evil in its proper context, it shifts the blame from God to us---and we begin to see the real problem of human evil is not God being evil, but our own created evil. Therefore, appealing to human evil as evidence against God is not a sound argument, but what about natural evil?

Craig notes that Plantinga pushes back against natural evil by simply appealing to possible demonic activity. Within the Christian worldview, there are angelic beings who have also rebelled against God and have some dominion over this world. The natural world was given dominion to the Sons of God (Bene Elohim, בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים), but they perverted that responsibility at satan’s fall from heaven (Deuteronomy 32:8-9, Psalm 82, 96:5, and 106:37-38). Demons also have free will, so it is possible that God could not preclude natural evils without removing the free will of angelic entities. This may sound like a weak argument, but it reveals the mistake in the skeptic's argument. They are claiming that the coexistence of God and Evil is logically contradictory, implying there are necessarily no reasons for God to permit it. But as we have just seen, there are logical possibilities that account for God permitting certain natural and human evils---revealing the fatal flaw in this critique. All the Christian needs to do is show that there are logically possible explanations, for the skeptic is claiming there are none. What they are claiming needs to be logically that way and that way only for their objection to land, but if any possibilities can be shown, their argument collapses by assuming one possibility is the only one. In summary, the first assumption, that God could have created a world where people always choose the morally right choices freely, devoid of natural disasters, diseases, and other natural evils, is false.

What about the second assumption, that if God is all-loving, He would prefer a world without evil over a world with evil present? This is also not necessarily true. There are many situations in our lives when we permit pain and suffering in order to bring about some greater good we will achieve if we persist through it. We have sufficient reasons for permitting those pains. If I want to be athletically fit, I must permit myself to experience the pain of my muscles tearing and healing while being sore in my off-time, dehydration, exhaustion, mental and physical strain, etc. And every parent knows this fact all too well. Every parent must allow their child to push through difficult experiences in order to develop their character into a mature adult. The best part is we all learn best when we learn from our mistakes. Part of developing your character and growing up is identifying your flaws, giving them to the LORD, and growing in Christ; the best way to identify your faults is through mistakes and reflection. Similarly, God may permit suffering in our lives in order to build our character, test us, or achieve a greater good in the world. All-loving does not mean He guarantees our continuous happiness. He is not a cosmic sugar daddy, but our Father and Savior. In Him we find the only proper integration point for what's true. Even though He is all-loving, He very well may have morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil in the world and in our lives. Both of the skeptics' hidden assumptions are not necessarily true, and thus are not valid.

Someone may respond further by conceding everything, but arguing that God's coexistence with evil is not consistent with the frequency and amount of evil in the world. They are claiming that there is an inconsistency between the amount of evil we observe and an all-loving and all-powerful God actually existing. But this is assuming that God cannot have sufficient reasons for permitting evil, which is also not necessarily true. This cherry-picks the evil in the world and, on those grounds alone, argues a logical inconsistency. Craig and Moreland ask us to take into consideration "first the amount of evil in the world. As terrible a place as the world is, there is still on balance a great deal more good in the world than evil. Despite life’s hardships, people generally agree that life is worth living, and when things are going bad, people characteristically look to the future in the hope that things will get better.”⁴ Indeed, given the amount of good in the world as well, we can see that there is at least enough good to balance the scales or tip it over, for almost all of us would admit life is worth struggling through tough times. Moreover, it is possible that in any other possible world, the ratio of good and evil could not have been better than the one we currently inhabit---it is possible that any world containing less evil may contain less good. Once again, this argument may seem weak, but the skeptic claims that it is necessarily true that God and evil cannot coexist; we can entertain logical possibilities, implying the skeptic's assumption is not true.

The skeptic has assumed a massive epistemological burden of proof to prove that there is a logical contradiction between God and evil. But as we have seen, no such necessary contradiction exists, and the assumptions that frame it as such are arbitrary and invalid. It's up to the atheist to demonstrate or offer epistemic justification for their assumptions that there are no other possibilities in town. Thus, the logical problem of evil has been defeated, as there is no strict inconsistency between God coexisting with evil in the world. But there is another form of the Internal Problem of Evil, the probabilistic version of the problem. This is also called the Evidential Problem of Evil. An atheist may concede that there are logically possible reasons God may permit evil, yet they may push back with another form, arguing that even though the logical account of evil suffices, the morally sufficient reasons God may have seem to be very unlikely to be true.

“The reasoning goes as follows: It seems like there is no reason to allow this evil; therefore, probably there is no reason to allow it.”⁵

The world is full of so many seemingly pointless and unnecessary evils that it seems doubtful and very unlikely that God exists and has sufficient reasons for permitting them. Given the evil that is present in the world, the existence of God is deemed improbable. But is this a valid argument? Is it improbable that God exists given the evil in the world? Craig and Moreland offer three points in response to this. The first is to essentially agree with the atheist---that indeed, given the evil in the world in isolation, it does seem that God's existence is improbable. Probabilities are relative to our background information, and given only evil as our background information, of course God's existence is improbable. It is thus very appropriate to ask, "Improbable relative to what?"

“...suppose that Joe is a college student. Suppose further that 90 percent of college students drink beer… it is highly probable that Joe drinks beer. But suppose we find out that Joe is a Biola University student and that 90% of Biola students do not drink beer. Suddenly the probability of Joe’s being a beer drinker has changed dramatically!”⁶

As we can see, whatever probability one creates for himself, it will always be limited by the background information taken into account in that moment. This can also be seen in the discoveries leading to the grand finding that the universe had a beginning some time in the past. Beforehand, most people believed the universe was eternal and infinite in space and matter, but as more information and evidence was gathered, the probability of that being true shrank accordingly until that hypothesis was rendered invalid. As more evidence was gathered, the total background information changed, and thus the probability of the universe being infinite and self-existent collapsed to practically zero. Now we apply this revelation to the Probabilistic Problem of Evil. If the evil in the world was the only information in the backdrop, then it is not surprising if God's existence initially appears to be improbable. But the Christian has more background knowledge than just the evil in the world, and so does the atheist, in the equal, if not greater, good in the world, as well as arguments for God's existence on other grounds. We have the teleological argument, the cosmological argument, historical evidence for the resurrection and reliability of the Bible, evidence and philosophical arguments for miracles, preconditions of knowledge, and transcendent metaphysical truths.

“Hence, the theist could actually admit that the problem of evil, taken in isolation, does make God’s existence improbable. But he will insist that when the total scope of the evidence is considered, then the scales are at least evenly balanced or tip in favor of theism.”⁷

Once our background information is expanded with other arguments and evidence, especially preconditions of knowledge and basic metaphysical beliefs and categories, the improbability of God's existence balances out the scales, if not tips it over in theism's favor. But this is a cumulative case, so let's continue to the other two to see how the scales are truly stacked.

The second response is that we are not in a good epistemic position to determine the probability that God has no morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil. If God truly exists, then we must entertain things that would follow if this is the case. Such a consequence would be that if God exists, then He transcends our knowledge and understanding, being the ground of things such as the laws of logic, the ordered world, fine-tuning, the regularity of natural law, mathematical truths, objective truth, and morality. This entails that there are certainly things God wills, understands, or thinks that are completely outside of our domain of comprehension. As finite persons, we are limited in space, time, extension, intellect, and cause and effect. God sees all of history from beginning to end, from the start of the universe to its demise under His reforming hand---and He orders that history so that His purposes are ultimately achieved through humanity's use of their free-will----and for such to be done, certain evils may need to be permitted to achieve the greater purpose.

“...we can figure out reasons that God might have for many (perhaps most) of the evils in the world. For example, both human freedom and a stable, cause-and-effect universe are necessary for any meaningful action. Meaningful action, then, may be a reason that God allows various kinds of evil.”⁸

Evil that seems pointless to us in our limited frame of reference may seem completely rational and morally sufficient from God's omniscient frame. A seemingly pointless evil may set off a chain of causation that sends ripples down through history, meaning God's morally sufficient reason isn't revealed until decades, even centuries later. Only an omniscient mind can comprehend the sheer complexity of directing an entire universe of free-willed creatures toward an end goal. And this, our inherent epistemological limitations, aligns perfectly with a modern, developing field of science called Chaos Theory. Chaos Theory attempts to describe large complex systems, like the weather or a car engine. It reveals how sensitive very complex systems are to small changes, like a butterfly flapping its wings and setting off a chain of causation that results in a tropical storm across the ocean. Or take, for example, 10 different cars, from new to old, with various models, engine types, and sizes, ranging from 0 miles to 250,000 miles. You add a few tablespoons of water to the oil filler cap of each car. The condition of any car depends on many variables such as engine temperature, material, oil amount and condition, mileage, make and model, the piston firing pattern and configuration, and much more. If the car is brand new with a fresh oil change that runs at a manageable internal temperature with adequate internal protection and design, it may run well for a few miles----but to a 1992 Hyundai Excel with 250k miles, it may drive a few miles and then break down with a blown bearing and internal corrosion.

In the same exact way, one would have to think through the innumerable, incalculable variables and factors involved in arriving at just a few events in history, as well as many more, including hundreds of prophecies about Jesus and other events.

“...it is reasonable to think that God will have reasons that we cannot grasp for allowing evils in our lives. In fact, to think that we should be able to figure out God’s reasons for allowing every case of evil implies that we think God is not much smarter than we are… There will be evil for which the reason we cannot discern.”⁸

We have no idea of the natural and human evils that may be involved in order for God to arrange the circumstances of free moral agents for some desired goal, say the Exodus from Egypt. Neither are we able to discern all the reasons God may have in mind for permitting some evil to enter into our lives. Because of our finite limitations, we cannot discover every reason; we may be able to imagine some of them, but claiming we know all of them is not true. And this is relevant for other moral systems:

“One of the most damaging objections to utilitarian ethical theory, for example, is that it is quite simply impossible for us to estimate which action that we might perform will ultimately lead to the greatest amount of happiness or pleasure in the world.”⁹

Heck, we can't even discern the long-term consequences of our current actions, so how could we ever comprehend every event, action, and choice made in history? And this isn't an appeal to mysticism or some special pleading, but a real epistemic limitation every human being faces because we exist in a temporal, finite, material world. Nobody can escape that limitation except God Himself, if He exists. Craig and Moreland's final response is that the Christian can appeal to doctrines within the Christian worldview that increase the probability of God and evil coexisting. Christianity contains certain dogmas and beliefs that decrease the probability that God does not exist---and Craig lists three doctrines (among many others) to demonstrate this. The first can be phrased as a question to the skeptic: Is the purpose of life happiness? These objections usually assume that the sole purpose of human life is maximizing happiness, but for the Christian, life's purpose is far greater than what feels good. Neither the atheist nor the skeptic truly believes this, as we shall see. Human beings are not God's pets; we are more like His children, His sons and daughters, whose only true fulfillment in life will be achieved through the knowledge of and love for God, the ground of everything material and immaterial.

Some suffering may initially seem pointless for maximizing happiness, but it is not pointless for producing within the person a deeper, more intimate knowledge of God. As already discussed, suffering can be an opportunity for people to grow, mature, and develop a deeper dependency on God. Whether God's purpose is achieved through our suffering depends entirely on how we respond to His invitation to experience His glory. We can either respond in anger and bitterness towards God (like a moody teenager throwing a fit because their father offered to help them out with a simple task), or respond with faith and trust in God (like the kid humbly accepting his father's help, seeing it as an opportunity to learn something and grow closer to Him). Because God's ultimate purpose for humanity is to know Him, the only true source of eternal happiness and life for humanity, evil in history cannot be assessed in any framework that ignores knowledge of and the Kingdom of God. In short, natural and moral evils may be a means God can use to draw people into a loving relationship with Him, and it is in the places that have experienced the most human and natural evil that display the most rapid growth of Christianity.¹⁰

As Craig notes, the history of mankind has been not just war between nations and tribes, but also the advance of the Kingdom of God. This present age is the time in history when more people en masse are converting to Christianity than ever before---and this is certainly in part due to natural and human evils that were permitted. Mankind is also in rebellion against God and His purposes for creation, so not everyone will respond with faith and worship; some may turn away and rebel against Him, thus finding themselves morally and epistemologically alienated not just from themselves, but from one another too. The sins and evils of people are a type of testimony to the decrepit spiritual state of mankind, being separated from God (Romans 1:24-28, Ephesians 4:17-18, 1 Corinthians 2:14, and 2 Corinthians 4:4). And God's purposes are not just bound to this mortal life, but overflow into eternity with God. In Christianity, this present life is but a glimmer compared with the full scale of our lives to come. If someone suffers a terrible death, but is reunited with God after death, then as time passes in eternity, the small window of mortality looks but like a water molecule in the ocean. When those saved by Christ face hardships in this life, they endure them with eternity in view. We take on burdens with God's eternal promises in view.

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4:16)

It may very well be that certain evils are pointless from a purely human perspective, but God permits them anyway so He can infinitely reward those who push through them in faith and hope in Him. A God who can only make things good is one great thing, but a God who can make good out of the evil free-will choices of humans is an even greater one. One could also appeal to other doctrines, such as demonic activity and deception, Man's dominion over creation before the fall, and knowledge of God as the highest good, but we can also bring in an example from Scripture. In John 11, Lazarus, probably at his best health, falls ill and dies. The citizens of his village, Bethany, perhaps were unable to see a good reason for God to permit his death and illness, especially after three days of grieving.

"When he heard this, Jesus said, 'This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.'" (John 11:4)

Then Jesus shows up three days late, and Lazarus' sisters rebuke Him for not coming earlier to heal Him. But Jesus had a reason the entire time: He already knew Lazarus was sick and dying, yet He delayed His departure for Bethany. Jesus, God Himself, had good reasons for permitting Lazarus to die so young. When Jesus shows up, He doesn't just resurrect Lazarus, but He weeps over his death. The God of the universe entered flesh and suffered just like Lazarus' family—anger and bitterness toward the evil He did not create. Jesus underwent our suffering, and one of the worst pains: losing a very close loved one.

"So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, 'Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.' When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, 'Take off the grave clothes and let him go.'” (John 11:41-44)

God's reason for permitting this evil was greater than any other, so that the glory of God may be shown and witnessed to. The Probabilistic Problem of Evil is not unanswerable. Once we expand our background knowledge of certain truths about reality, human nature, and divine sovereignty and middle knowledge, we can see that God and evil can very well coexist, and this doesn't render it implausible beyond a reasonable doubt. We also learn something about ourselves: we introduced evil into the world through our own misuse of free will. And this is everybody's story. With Christian doctrines, our epistemic limitations, logical consistency, and real-world observations, we can see that it is not at all improbable that God and evil coexist, especially when we are the ones who caused it. God has offered a way back to Him through His Son, Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity. Evil is an effect caused by our actions, not by God's. And by extension, the Internal Problem of Evil has been resolved, and the objection rendered false.

The External Problem of Evil

While the Internal Problem of Evil was concerned with putting two or more Christian beliefs against one another, the External Problem of Evil claims that seemingly pointless and unnecessary evils in the world are actually evidence against God's existence. This essentially introduces premises and propositions the Christian is not obliged to accept, and we will see more on this shortly. This form of the Problem of Evil can be presented as two main premises, followed by a conclusion. First, an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God exists. Second, gratuitous evil exists. Therefore, God does not exist. An extra premise can clarify this: if God exists, gratuitous evil would not exist. But since we see pointless and undeserved evils in the world, God cannot exist. This is an external critique because a Christian does not accept that gratuitous evil exists.

Evil surely exists, but not solely for no good reason. This argument claims that gratuitous evil exists; therefore, God cannot exist, but it assumes that if we cannot identify a morally sufficient reason for God to permit some evil, then there is no morally sufficient reason. A Christian can respond with the same aforementioned epistemic limitations humanity has. Just because we can't find a good reason for God to permit evil gives little to no ground to think God couldn't have one. One would have to be omniscient to know all true propositions, and thus have the ability to discern a sufficient reason for God's permitting evil. Still, nobody is omniscient and therefore cannot know all those reasons. The Christian's argument could be stated like this: If God exists, then gratuitous evil does not exist, and since we have a very high confidence in His existence, gratuitous evil does not exist. Moreover, the existence of evil can be constituted as evidence for God's existence.

If God does not exist, all moral judgments are grounded in human opinion. Whether that comes from individuals or group agreement, it still originates with human beings. If that is the case, then any moral judgment is valid because it is grounded in our creativity, just as if we were to build the best chair, I might build a Lazy Boy while another person might make a simple fold-out chair. Our tastes and preferences determine the forms of those chairs. If morality is grounded in this same way, in our opinions, then its form depends on our tastes and preferences, and nothing is objectively right or wrong. Without an unchanging standard, morality collapses into self-contradicting subjectivism. Neither can moral truths exist somewhere out there on their own. Moral virtues and categories cannot exist on their own, for the only place (without God) to ground them is within the universe, a being characterized by constant change and flux. How could a universally binding and unchanging truth be grounded in something that is constantly changing? Moral truth would also change along with the matter, but it doesn't. An immaterial, unchanging, infinite mind is the only entity adequate to ground moral values epistemologically.

So if you hold to the position that the evils you claim are objectively evil, binding to all people, transcending their tastes and opinions, you must believe in God for that to be actually true, and therefore evil provides evidence for God's existence. And with our total background knowledge of several arguments for God's existence (Cosmological, Teleological, Transcendental, Ontological, etc.), including this argument from the impossibility of evil's existence without God, essentially a moral/axiomatic argument, we have no intellectual reasons to accept the premise that God and evil's coexistence is not probable, unnecessary, or logically contradictory. And that is profound! When we analyze the problem honestly, we come back to more evidence for God's existence, highlighting His existence as necessary for the material world to exist at all. The Intellectual Problem of Evil has thus been solved.¹¹ But this type of intellectual answer will sound cold and distant from a person's situation and feelings. This brings us to the Emotional Problem of Evil, the version I would argue is dependent on a person's spiritual state towards Christ. Finally, the Intellectual Problem of Evil has nothing to do with what is the most reasonable to believe given your background information now, as there is nothing evidentially or logically wrong with God and evil.

The Emotional Problem of Evil

The intellectual answer to the Problem of Evil may not fully satisfy someone experiencing undeserved suffering. For these people, the Problem of Evil is not intellectual but an emotional one, and this is the case for most people today. Most of the time, when someone asks about God's permission of certain evils, they aren't making a philosophical argument but venting their emotions in reaction to evil. This is a very different problem than claiming God and evil are a logical contradiction.

“There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.” – Primo Levi.

“The death of a child is the greatest reason to doubt the existence of God.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

“I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I am wrong.”12

Even most popular atheists today don't necessarily have a logical problem with evil, but purely an emotional one. Whether that comes from genuine hurt and trauma in life, or from pure arrogance and pride against theism, the most important thing someone can do is simply listen. You don't know what they may be going through, so instead of imagining yourself in their place and entertaining how you would react (empathy), listen to how they feel, what happened from their perspective, and get to know them as a person and not just a victim. Some will need counseling and perhaps some grieving---even Christians go through this. From their worldview, the skeptic has nothing to say. It is neither wrong nor right, but it is, and you feel a certain way about it, but none of it is objective. It is ultimately meaningless and hopeless. But Christianity isn't without an answer, and it aligns with our experience because, once again, most people would agree that life is worth living despite all the evil in the world. Moreover, we consider someone who has some concept of meaning in their life as stable and healthy, but under atheism, you have no justification for meaning; it is all illusion. God is there, and He is not silent.

God entered into our suffering and shares in it. He endured the agony of the crucifixion, both in Jesus' experience and in the Father witnessing the second person of the Trinity, completely innocent and holy, being hung on a cross, whipped and bleeding. Our God is a suffering God. No other religion has a god with wounds, real wounds like the Son. No other gods suffer with us, are fully present in it, or ever entered our experience to suffer and pay our moral debt! Jesus is the only one who did it, and the only one able to. God the Father was willing to permit---and the Son to accept---the greatest evil in all of history to overcome sin and death and make way for His children to return to Him and His promises. Jesus Christ's suffering is beyond all comprehension, and yet he was prepared to suffer all of the pains and evils of hell itself, and come back to prove He is the infinite and all-powerful God! He was not even guilty in any sense,

“He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth” (1 Peter 2:22)

“He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

“We have a high priest who was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15)

"In Him there is no sin" (1 John 3:5)

And despite that innocence, He willingly underwent the most incomprehensible suffering for us because He loves us so much (John 15:13). With that revelation, how could any reasonable person reject the very person who gave everything up for us, yet in His power He gave us in return more than everything in the ultimate act of Love and Grace?

“When we comprehend his sacrifice and his love for us, this puts the problem of evil in an entirely different perspective. For now we see clearly that the true problem of evil is the problem of our evil. Filled with sin and morally guilty before God, the question we face is not how God can justify himself to us, but how we can be justified before him.”¹³

When we shift our focus to the cross and keep it in the backdrop of our lives, we gain the moral strength to bear our crosses and endure suffering in this life, with hope and faith in His promises and His work within us. The Problem of Evil is indeed the biggest and hardest objection to God's existence, yet God is the only answer to the very problem.

What If My System Works?

You may remain unconvinced, perhaps assuming that because whatever system you subscribe to works for you, it is true. This is subjectivism, as mentioned earlier, where something is true simply because someone believes it. Specifically, this presupposes a utilitarian ethical system. Utilitarian Ethical Theory states that any action or idea that is useful to a subject, as long as it does not harm any others, is true. But this theory confuses a description of something being useful (a particular observation) for a universal normative "ought." Why ought we believe that useful things are true, other than because they are useful? Something may be useful yet still wrong, such as a useful lie or doing cocaine, yet we still object to them as morally wrong in some way. Something transcends a proposition's or presupposition's utility and dictates whether it is deemed wrong or right.

In short, just because something works does not mean it is true. This is a formal logical fallacy called affirming the consequent. In philosophical terms, this is stated as "If P (a proposition), then Q (another proposition or presupposition); Q is true, therefore P is true. It is circular logic because the thing in question is what is being appealed to. We question whether something's utility determines its truth value, yet the skeptic appeals to that very utility to justify it. So just because moral relativism may work, or make you feel good, does not mean it is true, because something above feelings and opinions determines whether it is true or false/right or wrong. But let's move on to an analysis of materialism, or naturalism. Naturalism is the worldview that there is nothing beyond nature, also called atheism. Can naturalism account for the existence of universally binding moral truths?

Can Naturalism/Atheism Account For Objective Morality?

Every Atheist holds to some form of naturalism, even if they aren't aware of it. And whenever you make normative moral statements, or any claim, for that matter, you enter the realm of philosophy. Many believe they can, or already have, accounted for objective morals, either through personal taste or group opinion about a moral statement.

Morality is not like other areas of philosophy, such as epistemology (how we can know, and whether we can know, true things; theories of knowledge and justification) or metaphysics (what is real and what is true). Moral statements are normative, meaning they relate to standards, rules, or laws. For example, killing children is always wrong is a normative statement; it is prescribing how things ought to be, and here specifically human behavior. The propositional content of the statement is directed toward how things "ought" to be, and in the case of morality, how one "ought" to act to be good. So can naturalism account for universal normative statements? Can it find an epistemological grounding, or justification for the existence of moral virtues?

Where Does It Come From?

Do moral truths originate from personal preference (subjectivism), cultural perspectives (relativism), or government entities or some group? (relativism), or government entities or some group. You may think that killing innocent people is wrong, but say you belong to a tribe of hunter-gatherers about to wage war with a neighboring tribe. In that group, killing outsiders is good. Or say you belong to the Umayyad Caliphate during the Arab-Byzantine wars, performing Jihad on infidels. To them, killing the infidel, innocent or not, is one of the highest goods---and dying in the process of battle against the infidel is the greatest (Surah 9:111, Sahih Muslim bk 19 no. 4294, etc.). But what if this group existed in a nation not run by Islam? Where murder is illegal---then the authority is from the government's law rather than a group of people.

In this instance, we see that moral objectivity does not originate in human opinion, since tribal morality trumps it. It also can't come from groups or tribes, because an overarching government trumps that. But it also cannot come from governments, since multiple nations differ in their law; we can apply a standard to evaluate whether they are right or wrong, so something trumps that authority. On the ontological scale (take this to mean a scale of existence, how "great" or authoritative something is), something transcendent to human groups or nations dictates their behaviors. Homicide detective and apologist J. Warner Wallace notes that we can learn three main points about moral hierarchy from this.

1. The higher authority has more overarching laws and applies them more broadly.

2. The higher the authority, the more universally applicable the laws.

3. All of these laws or moral axioms are essentially obligations between persons.

   
   

In the example above, each higher authority (from an individual to a group to a government) had more power to apply its laws to the people within it. We also saw that the higher authorities had a more universally imposing law, as more and more people were under them. We also observe that moral truths are obligatory. You are not obligated to the iron ore used to make a sledgehammer, nor a stick in the forest. You are obligated only to persons, so moral truths have a personal nature. But do these laws and rules of morality truly exist? Is the standard we apply to people, groups, and nations to determine whether what they do, or have done, is right or wrong truly real? If so, can we ground them in beliefs, cultures, human biology, or are they just an illusion?

Do Morals Exist?

Most people, or at least anyone whose mental capacities are functioning correctly, believe in objective, universally binding morality, even if they don't admit it. All people certainly demonstrate their real belief in this in their everyday life---and yes, they will make universal normative statements about human behavior, or appeal to universally applicable principles. Moral truths, at face value and in deeper reflection, are self-evident. Just as once someone "sees" how 1+1=2 works, they understand it is true, so too can someone recognize moral truths, even if some particular instances leave moral judgment unclear. We will always have a concept of right and wrong, even if we disagree about which actions are right and which are wrong. From here on, I will refer to this universally intuitive concept as man's "moral motions." To test if Moral truths are self-evident, we can ask a simple question. Is it morally okay to torture infants for fun?

Every rational person would agree that it is always wrong to torture infants for the fun of it. This universal normative statement is a transcendent, objective moral truth claim. It is not grounded in our opinions or creativity, but binding to us despite those faculties. It cannot be grounded in the material world or human minds, because matter is characterized by constant change and flux, yet moral truth remains the same for everyone and never changes. You will never find a place in the universe for morals to be, because any place or object will eventually change into something else,e removing the grounds for justifying those morals as unchanging. So, at some point, we can see that morality cannot be justified by personal enjoyment---which is a personal preference. If this were true, then any action could be considered good simply because the subject (a person) believes it is. Moreover, humans have accepted various objective truths throughout history. Every major nation shares some moral truths.

“Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or every one. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired.”¹⁴

By observing every human nation, we can see at least one universal moral truth: unselfishness, usually expressed as some form of the golden or silver rule. If there is even one objective moral truth, then God exists (more on this in the section on God's moral necessity). Finally, normative moral claims such as the golden rule presuppose the inherent dignity and value of human life. At a fundamental level, we expect far more from one another than we do animals or plants, and nature. You never think it is wrong that your puppy peed on the floor; you haven't potty-trained him yet! You do have an intuitive moral nature when you watch someone innocent get murdered. This isn't to minimize the sin of violence against animals, but to highlight the large moral chasm between humans and animals. You never hold a rock accountable for falling on your head, but you hold yourself accountable for not being more aware of your surroundings. We experience moral duties only toward persons, specifically other humans. If objective moral truths do exist---and according to mankind's universal experience, everyone has moral motions---then what is their source? Where do they come from? How can we justify them?

If we cannot find a proper grounding for morality in the ever-changing universe, then its cause or ground must be external to it and personal, so that we are obligated to the universal standard/law imposed on us by a lawgiver.

Can Naturalism Account For The Existence Of Morality?

We now turn to an analysis of naturalism's accounts of morals, and whether they offer a proper epistemic justification for them.

T he first method for justifying morals is to appeal to irrationality: that morals are just an illusion. Words such as good and bad are just strings of symbols or sounds banded together. Since the world is just particles in motion, there is no room for words or propositions to have ontological status in the world (in other words, exist). This philosophical framework is called Nihilism, from the Latin word Nihil, meaning "nothing." This position doesn't see moral claims as either true or false; those words express how someone feels about something else, and nothing more. We can know only truths we can test through science. If you have read any of my previous writings, you may recall that this is a form of philosophical reductionism called scientism, or logical positivism. It is a self-contradictory theory of truth because the claim itself cannot be verified through science; it is a philosophical commitment someone makes before ever doing science, and it is what justifies it, yet it would come before doing science. Yet the very thing that supposedly justifies science is never, and cannot, be verified by science. We also know of other truths that science, by its very nature, cannot discern—things like our own thoughts or the laws of logic and mathematics. Morals operate in this same manner. Science describes how natural systems operate; morality dictates how things "ought" to be---they are completely different explanations. This method does not suffice to ground moral truth.

Others may appeal to some form of subjectivism. The second method naturalism can produce is that personal preferences justify moral truths. Do subjects create moral truths as they would a taste for chocolate milk? This method fails in the aforementioned example, where a higher authority trumped a person's individual beliefs. This is also mixing opinions and tastes with universal normative claims. They are not the same; opinions are trumped by something---truth that corresponds to what truly is in the world---and if murder is wrong for all people, then it is not grounded in how they feel about murder. We all know someone, or have seen them on the news or in a show, who has opinions about moral claims that are obviously irrational and backward. But according to subjectivism, their opinions are just as valid as anybody else's. This method is also self-contradictory because if there is no universal moral truth, then the only objectively morally good thing is to be subjective. If there is no objective truth, then the only objective truth is that there is none---a logical contradiction. You have things being simultaneously true and false. This is the subjectivist's dilemma: either the claim is false, and there is objective moral truth, or the claim is true, and there is still one objective truth, namely that there is none. It's illogical.

Suppose morals aren't grounded in individuals; perhaps they're grounded in large groups of them agreeing on a set of moral claims. Suppose a majority of people agree on a specific moral system; that makes it right and "better" than another system with fewer proponents. As long as a majority agrees on a moral standard, that standard is good and moral for them. This is relativism, where truth is relative to a group or culture. If so, how do we determine who is right if a group is split 50/50? What if one group sees children as husbands and wives? Is that wrong? Moreover, how can we determine what exactly makes a statement right? How do we know which culture is correct? Is it the size? Strength or military might? Technological status? How many must agree, or must everybody agree? Morality cannot come from groups, because we can use morality to judge whether groups are wrong.

Some relativists might clarify that whatever is legal within a nation is right. Far too many people think like this without even noticing: "Well, it must be okay since it's legal." What if a government enacts laws that infringe on its citizens' rights? Say it forces them to work without reward or pay? Or kill anybody who questions or opposes them? Morality does not come from human-made law, since it can be applied to nations and laws to determine when a government is evil.

The fifth method appeals to human flourishing. Figures such as Sam Harris push this system. It essentially says that t “questions about values—about meaning, morality, and life’s larger purpose—are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures.”¹⁵ Since human biology transcends cultural norms, morality can be grounded in biological facts about humanity. I mean, if my culture believes pooping isn't real, I will still poop. Biology trumps culture. But this method creates a slippery-slope fallacy. Some proponents of this system admit that enslaving people is beneficial to the flourishing of human society. A good example of this system's absurdity goes as follows. If a government genetically modified a class of people whose only desire is to work for other people, and their only source of happiness comes from performing slave labor. Is it morally okay to do that if it benefited society's well-being? Obviously not. Slavery in any context is morally wrong, so much so that even in science fiction some authors entertain giving personal rights to robots----preprogrammed slavery is wrong! But under this system, human flourishing determines what is right or wrong, and very obviously, that is not the case. The problem with this position is that certain abhorrent acts can be framed as morally acceptable or necessary---and if you subscribe to this system and refuse to admit slavery can be good, you are breaking the rules of the worldview. This entirely depends on the definition of flourishing. If it means survival, then many inhumane actions can be done in the name of survival and procreation; if it means as many people being as happy as possible, then telling massive and minor lies is perfectly acceptable. Finally, nothing about this offers any reason to help others. If my goal in life is survival or happiness, why should I care about others? What reason logically warrants cooperation? Is there something higher than survival that tells me it's better to survive with a community? Whatever that is, it can't be survival or happiness.

The last method to justify moral virtues is to treat them as simple features or facts of the universe. They account for morals by placing them as fixed features of the universe, like the laws of physics or the four fundamental forces. Some may see them as genuinely real abstract objects, existing in some transcendent or pneumatic realm, as some neo-Platonists do, butlet'ss stick to them as brute facts of the universe. This method also commits a category error by mixing normative statements with descriptive statements. Moral statements are normative, and prescribe how things "ought" to be between persons. The laws of thermodynamics have no "oughtness"; they do not oblige me to help an old lady across the street. This view fails to account for the personal nature of moral duties between persons exclusively. This moral law must be directed at, or imposed by, a personal being, or it ceases to be morality as morality.

Nature offers no place for morality to be grounded, so nothing in naturalism can justify universal normative statements about human behavior. So the source must be outside of it.¹⁶ We now come face to face with the biggest Problem about Evil and morality—God's necessity for both to be real in the way we all deeply desire.

God's Moral Necessity

This final section draws heavily from the Transcendental Argument, as well as Francis A. Shaeffer's foundational work, "He is There, and He is Not Silent." This book lays out a kind of transcendental argument by showing that God is necessary to justify and ground metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics/morality. A Transcendental Argument aims to show that you cannot justify any transcendent concept or category, like logic, morals, thoughts, and other assumptions about the world, without grounding them in a God-like being. It attacks the presuppositions required for moral and logical reasoning, and for justifying knowledge or moral truth, to exist. These presuppositions, or preconditions, are expectations such as that the world is ordered. In such a way that I can understand it, that the laws of logic apply to all people in all places, that there are really right and wrong behaviors, that other minds except myself exist and can understand the world too, I can get to know other minds in a relational way, etc., that are necessary for any human faculty to operate. It then asks what is necessary for those preconditions to be true, and analyzes different justifications for various kinds of knowledge. In doing so, we always find that a transcendent, personal mind is the only entity adequate to justify, or ground, our preconditions for knowledge, and, in this case, moral knowledge.

What Is Evil?

Before I continue, I want to cover one thing. Throughout this discussion, and in most conversations, we treat or speak of evil as if it has an independent existence apart from good. Some kind of opposing force to the righteousness and goodness of our world. But is this view correct? Does evil exist apart from good? With regard to this, there are two dominant moral systems. Moral Dualism, as the term suggests, sees good and evil as ontologically distinct. Then there is the Privation Theory of Evil, which states that the ultimate reality is the good, with evil being a perversion or lack of it. I will begin with Moral Dualism. The most developed religious form of Moral Dualism would be Manichaeism, with others including Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, neo-Platonism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, to name a few.

Saint Augustine is a Church Father who himself was a Manichaean for nine years before converting to Christianity, and wrote extensively refuting Moral Dualism. Manichaeism is a cult founded in the third century A.D. by a prophet named Mani in Persia. He claimed to be the last prophet following Buddha, Zoroaster, and then Jesus, and saw good and evil in an eternal struggle against one another. I will not get too deep into Manichaeism here because this article is already so long, but I will raise some objections Augustine used against Moral Dualism. First, if Evil is real and has ontological status in the world, then God isn't truly all-powerful, since there would be something eternal that God did not create and isn't able to overcome. Take Gnosticism for example. It sees an evil creator god, the demiurge, originating from an imperfection in the perfect pleroma of good gods. A literal logical contradiction. And if you are a Christian and hold to some form of Moral Dualism, then you have an inconsistency with God and evil's coexistence. The second objection is that since God created all things, and Scripture states it was all originally good (Gen 1:31), evil must be viewed as a corruption of what was originally good, as we discussed earlier. Just like rust on a car is not independent of the car (if the car is gone, so too is any potential to rust), so too is evil dependent on the good already being there. And this is why evil proves God's existence, since it presupposes the existence of something good to pervert.

The last objection I will raise is that if evil is some objective thing inside of us, apart from our choice to pervert the good, then we have no room for moral accountability. If someone murders someone, then it was not their fault; they never chose the evil, because it is something apart from the person. This is especially prevalent in systems like Manichaeism that see human sin coming from a literal evil substance inside of us all. Or even in secular systems that see "sin" and evil as originating from determinate human nature and external societal factors. This framework shifts accountability from people's own choices to the environment or some external force. They go from perpetrators of their own evil to just victims of their circumstances.

Evil is not a real, ontological existing thing, but a perversion of what was already there, and already good at the historical fall of mankind (Gen 3). The Christian has the paradigm that sets evil in its right place. The Privation Theory of Evil. Evil is not fighting against good in some eternal equal battle, but has time in this world to pervert the good, perverting the time given to humans to repent. And by evil I mean Satan and his angels, not some objective and transcendent object of evil, but a finite, created being who perverted his own goodness just as we have.

What Is The Answer To Man's Moral Dilemma?

Shaeffer begins by introducing the dilemma of man, which consists of humanity's two crucial problems. Mankind is personal, distinct from mere matter and energy, yet still finite in intelligence and existence. Something about humans is not found in bare matter and energy, something that transcends mass in motion. Yet this "manishness," as he calls it, or human nature, is instantiated in each human being. For simplicity, let's call this consciousness an abstract, creative intelligence. Matter and energy have nothing inherently personal, or aware of their own first-person perspective, but humans exhibit this exact faculty and experience. Because humanity is finite by nature, it has no sufficient, unchanging internal reference point. This harkens back to the problem of subjectivism, where moral truth is grounded in human taste and opinions. We have no good, objective standard within ourselves to ground moral truth. We are not a proper point of integration for morals. The second problem is what Schaeffer calls the "Nobility of Man."

“We might not like this term, because of its romantic ties with the past, but still there is the wonder of man; but contrasted with this there is his cruelty.”¹⁷

He words it as though man is estranged from himself and other men in the area of morality. We all live with moral motions, or some concept of right and wrong. We are hard-wired to think in terms of good and always to chase it; not every method for chasing good is itself good. When a man steals to provide for his family, he is chasing a good---family provision---but through the wrong means. If nothing exists outside of man, how can we determine what the "good" actually means? If there is no God, then "good" becomes whatever a subject believes in the moment, and philosophically, it reduces to a description of an action. So we face the problem of morality: man is essentially lost in a forest of moral systems, with many paths. Some paths are mere desire paths formed by a few previous travelers; others are partially paved (some irrational at face value, others seemingly grounded in sturdy logic). But no matter which path he takes, they all circle through the forest. Only one path leads out, but let's consider some possible answers to this moral problem about man's personal and finite nature.

The First Answer Is To Begin With The Impersonal To Account For Morality

One possible answer to man's moral problem is to appeal to the impersonal. There is no transcendent, unchanging ground for morality---it is grounded in the atoms of your brain interacting in complex ways to produce the experience of consciousness. In this way, morality is essentially denied objectivity, and thus actually substantive existence and value. Whatever standard is asserted is simply arbitrary with no epistemological justification.

If you begin with the impersonal, man's finiteness (his materiality and limitations) and his cruelty collapse into the same thing. A type of moral monism, where all moral actions and truths are the same. Both good and bad, just are, and nothing more. It just is---particles in motion, or the being of God in pantheistic systems. It collapses into a universe with no moral particulars; there is only what is, an insufficient monism. Therefore, many eastern religions prescribe that you let go of your individuality, that it is an illusion and the real truth is that all existence is one. But now we have no logical room for moral goods or evils, and we fall back into the self-contradictory system of subjectivism and relativism. Shaeffer notes that starting with the impersonal strips morality of its separation from metaphysics. This is another way of saying moral claims become descriptions of events and feelings, and not normative prescriptions. Morality is thus degraded from an "ought" of how things "should" be, to simply a description of what simply is---and it becomes another type of metaphysics of being.

“Left in this position, we can talk about what is antisocial, or what society does not like, or even what I do not like, but we cannot talk about what is really right and what is really wrong.”¹⁷

If morality has no grounding, then man's position in the universe, out of line with impersonal nature, is an illusion that arose by mere chance. Nothing about it is inherently real or objective. Moral motions would be a facade with no ultimate fulfillment in nature. There is simply no place for morals as objective and binding, or real in any sense. Nature offers no standard that gives the terms good and bad final meaning. This is blatant: moral truths are unchanging, yet the universe is in constant change and flux, so unchanging morals cannot be grounded. If they were, they would change too, but they don't. In this case, cruelty becomes the same as non-cruelty. Evil and good are of the same substance. Nothing is objectively good or bad, because it depends on your perspective and frame of reference. Moreover, moral duties are not owed to impersonal substances or abstract objects; they are between persons. You owe nothing to a rock being crushed down to be incorporated in a concrete mix. You do owe something to the innocent child being crushed by a drunk driver's truck.

Beginning with the impersonal, whether that be naturalism or some form of pantheism---you can never find meaning in moral actions and motions; you can't even have meaningful words. You must live against your own worldview, a very perplexing circumstance indeed. Perhaps one that breeds internal conflict that morally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually destroys a person. As C.S. Lewis so thoughtfully remarked about his own experience with this:

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: A fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world really was unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense.”¹⁸

The Second Answer Is To Begin With The Personal To Account For Morality

Not all hope is lost, unless you have some irrational or emotional prejudice against theism and Christianity. When we come to the personal beginning to account for morals, we have the possibility of "keeping morals and metaphysics separate." Moral duties and truths are not simply what "is," but what it should be according to what the designer of our life, environment, and experience determines. In this paradigm, man's goodness is contrasted with his cruelty. They are kept separate, not merged into a description of what is. Now, man's personal nature is accounted for, but does that leave man's cruelty unanswered? Is man's evil the result of God's doing? As we covered earlier, Christianity holds that human free will brought evil into the world; thus, the Problem of Evil is a problem of our evil, but let's see how Schaeffer treats the other "solutions" to this problem. One answer a person could offer is that mankind has just always been twisted and sinful. This is the view that man is ultimately a cancer to the world, cruel to their very core---and they have always been like this, and always will be. Thinkers like Baudelaire and Camus enter the picture here. Baudelaire, this French poet, summarized this answer by saying, "If there is a God, He is the Devil." Camus takes this further, arguing that fighting natural evil is pointless because the world, as God made it, has always been this way; we would be fighting against God Himself. Thus, we can fight only our own sin.

From here, I will call Camus' and Baudelaire's tension the "Poet's Objection" to save space. Some people answer the Poet's Objection with either an arbitrary standard or biting the bullet and conceding that the world is just chaotic and irrational. This answer is so self-evidently false and at odds with our world, experience, science, and technological advancements. The world and our lives are not pure irrationality, because reason works, and everywhere we look we observe design and fine-tuning. Some Christian's even hold to this! They say there is no answer, and we take "God is good" on blind faith. And when you use this to account for God's goodness, it raises two issues. First, the moment the Christian or skeptic leaves this area of focus, they re-enter reason and rationality.

“...there will be a motion back toward reason.”¹⁷

As soon as they do this, that optimistic answer of blind faith also ceases because they take reason as objective. Still, the provider is provis essentially taking the position arbitrarily, appealing to irrationality when it's convenient. The second issue is the flip side: instead of a person re-entering reason to converse and contemplate other areas of life and thought, they expand that irrationality to all areas. There is simply no reason this paradigm shouldn't dominate all aspects of life and thought. This second issue is taking the irrationality defense to its logical end---that all is chaotic and irrational. Thus, appealing to the irrational infects your own worldview with irrationality---you can not only be irrational when in the area of religion---it must be consistently applied everywhere. Another problem of taking man as having always been cruel and sinful is that any hope of a qualitative change in man can happen. People may indeed change, but only become less evil; since they have always been cruel, they will never be "good." There will never be a total change in man's spiritual status; they remain evil no matter what. You are left with nothing but pessimism, one that contradicts human experience because it cannot let go of a false assumption or presupposition.

But Christianity does not offer this response by saying man has always been evil, and that all of this "morality" jargon is just an irrational illusion. Once again, the Christian can appeal to certain doctrines and beliefs to show that evil in this world does not contradict God remaining good. God does not necessarily have to be evil, as Baudelaire says. We need not conclude that either it is all false, or that God is evil, but rather that evil came about through another means. The Christian response is that man has not always been what he currently is. Man was not always evil. Humanity is now abnormal; a change in space and time has turned man toward cruelty. In other words, man, created by a personal God as a personal being, has changed himself by his own choices. By our own choice, we are not what we intrinsically were before this change. Here, we can finally understand that man is now cruel, and that God is not evil. This is the Christian answer—the real personal beginning.

In this case, God created man in His likeness (the Image of God) to make free choices and have libertarian freedom. At a specific point in history, mankind turned away, by their own choice, from their proper integration point (God) and toward themselves (the subject). When this happened, man became something he was not before, and the moral problem becomes just that: a real moral dilemma for man, not just a description of what "is" or a metaphysical statement. This is a big difference. The atheist asserts that man as he is now is what he always has been. But the Christian claims man is abnormal, alienated from what they originally was. The atheist has no room in their paradigm for morals as morals. The Christian has, as an essential part of his worldview, the very real presence and effects of a moral law and the consequences---both physical and spiritual---of turning away from it. The atheist has no account for man's moral motions; the Christian has every rhyme and reason, as an effect of turning away from our hardwired integration point, the grounding of all truth, Jesus Christ.

When we begin with the personal, triune God of the Bible, Schaeffer asserts, four things emerge. (1) We can explain that man is now cruel without God being evil. (2) Mankind, in their current state of abnormality, finally has hope of a real change and solution. In this setting, the cross of Christ has meaning. It is no longer just religious babble, but a real spacetime event whose effects rippled through history, past and future, with substantive meaning and logical warrant. There is hope for a qualitative change in man. (3) We now have ground for fighting evil, as it is not an inherent part of God's creation, but a foreign invading force brought about by human misuse of free will. Christianity has the answer to Camus' problem. Evil does not come from God, and the problem has shifted from God's evil to our evil. Moreover, God can be angry at evil, as when Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb in John 11. A father cannot be angry if he makes a mess in the kitchen with flour, as he caused it and is responsible for it. If his 6-year-old son does it after being told not to, he has grounds to be angry, because that is not what you'd expect whenyou're given directions. Our evil is not God’s responsibility, though, but despite this, He's taken it upon Himself anyway. Like a loving father who cleans up the mess, settles his child down, and calmly talks them through what they did wrong—while understanding the limitations of a 6-year-old. (4) We have a solid basis for objective moral absolutes.

“God’s character is the moral absolute of the universe. Plato was entirely right: unless you have absolutes, morals do not exist. Here is the complete answer to Plato’s dilemma; he spent his time trying to find a place to root his absolutes, but he was never able to do so because his gods were not enough. But here is the infinite-personal God who has a character from which all evil is excluded, and His character is the moral absolute of the universe,”¹⁷

God follows no standard beyond Himself; whatever is greater than God would be God. Rather, Himself and His character ground moral law. A transcendent personal mind is the only entity adequate to ground unchanging, immaterial, yet universally binding moral principles. Objective morality, a real good, is solely dependent on whether God is truly there. No other answer works, as all others fail to ground morality properly. God's existence is the crux of the dilemma of man and morality, and of the Problem of Evil as a whole. So it's either you go with humanity's universal experience and admit God's existence to ground morals, or you are left with pure irrationality and pessimism in all areas of life at best. Even making your own meaning is meaningless, and the point of being here at all for any length of time vanishes. Any remaining resemblance to meaning, reason, moral motion, and claims to knowledge is utterly illusory, and you can't even get off the ground, philosophically speaking. With the Christian answer, the man has finally found a stable, straight path in the forest, paved with bricks of gold and lined with the sweet smell of salvation and meaning, leading not just to the exit, but home, the gates of the Kingdom of God itself!

¹ (Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, pg 541)

² (David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part 10, pg 198; quoted in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, pg 542)

³ Link to Book

⁴ (Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, pg 544)

⁵ (Gregory E. Ganssle, How Can God Have All Power And Be All Loving And Yet There Still Be Evil? In Holman, The Apologetics Study Bible, pg 598)

⁶ (Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, pg 545)

⁷ (Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, pg 546)

⁸ (Gregory E. Ganssle, How Can God Have All Power And Be All Loving And Yet There Still Be Evil? In Holman, The Apologetics Study Bible, pg 599)

⁹ (Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, pg 547)

¹⁰ (See Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, pgs 164, 207-8, and 214 for details and diagrams discussing this point. Henrich et al., 2019 also demonstrate higher religiosity in these places, along with data compiled by The Pew Research Center and many others)

¹¹ (Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, pg 551-553)

¹² (Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov)

¹³ (Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, pg 553-554)

¹⁴ (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, pg 5)

¹⁵  (Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, pg 1, quoted in J. W. Wallace, God’s Crime Scene, pg 168)

¹⁶ (J. W. Wallace, God's Crime Scene, pgs 161-171)

¹⁷ (The Francis Schaeffer Trilogy, pg 291-302)