It would be nice to have a taxonomy of all possible argumentative strategies for reconciling the existence of God and the existence of evil. Here is the beginning of a list. What have I left out?
1. One might argue that evil is an illusion. Whether or not this has ever been maintained in pure form(
Christian Science?), it is a complete nonstarter for reasons painfully elaborated in
Why Evil Can't Be an Illusion.
2. One might argue that evil, though not an out-and-out illusion, is merely negative, an absence, lack, or privation of good. Powerful arguments against this privatio boni doctrine were presented here and here.
3. One might argue that evils are all of them instrumentally good: they are needed as means to goodness. This is not a promising line to take since surely not all evils are instrumentally good.
4. One might argue that a world containing free agents is better than one without them, and that free agents sometimes choose incorrectly. This, in nuce, is the classical free will defense. It is a promising line of argument but it faces a serious objection which we ought to discuss in a separate post: Why could not God have created a world in which free agents always choose correctly? I do not assume that this objection cannot be answered.
5. One might argue that God's ways are not our ways, that God and man have different understandings of goodness. But then God is not benevolent as we understand the term. Consider the case of Job lately discussed in these pages. God allows Satan to visit upon poor Job every calamity short of death. But Job is a righteous man, an innocent man. And when Job asks why he suffers unjustly, God answers him by saying in effect, "I am the All-Mighty and I can do whatever I want!" (See Job 38 ff.) That might-makes-right answer, of course, is no answer at all. Job gives in, asks no more questions, and his benefits are restored. But there is no answer here to the question of how a good God can permit an innocent man to suffer. For such a God is not good in any human sense of the term.
6. One might argue that God exists but is not wholly good. Robert Koons calls this dystheism.
7. Roderick Chisholm, basing himself on Brentano, suggests that "Some of the evil in the world is necessary for the enhancement of goodness. And the rest of the evil is defeated." (Brentano and Intrinsic Value, Cambridge UP, 1986, p. 100) But to explain the relevant concept of defeat is a task for a separate post.
