So, even before we get started on the POE (ironic that it spells "poe"
), I should prolly say what kind of deity it argues against. POE works to the fullest on an Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent (all-good) deity. I'll abbreviate this as Omni^3 (omni-cubed).So, onto the argument.
Two Premises:
1) God is Omni^3
2) The world could be better
From the first premise (Omni^3) we can say that God wants things to be the best they possibly can, and he's got the power to make them that way, therefore they oughtta be that way. From the second premise, we can see that there's room for improvement. They're contradictory statements, so one of them has to be false. Let's look at the Omni^3 one first.
If God weren't Omnipotent, he wouldn't neccesarily be able to fix the problems like, oh, random earthquakes and malaria killing babies. If he weren't omniscient, he might not even be smart enough to use his Omnipotence to grant himself Omniscience, and then things could slip by him cuz he's not smart enough to figure out how to fix them. And if he's not perfectly good, then he could look at the suffering in the world, and say "meh, doesn't hurt me, why should I care?".
Leaving any one of the Omni's out could excuse him from responsibility; on the other hand, if all three are in there he's kinda stuck holding the hot potato. Free will isn't an excuse if he's omnipotent--he could negate suffering and preserve free will if he were omniscient, even if that's impossible by defintion. If he can't, then that means the definition of free will is more powerful than God. Likewise, he can't plead ignorance if he's omniscient, or limiting physical factors if he's omnipotent. Not being able to pay attention to the entire universe at once doesn't work either; if the Omniscience doesn't cover it, he could use his omnipotence to give himself that ability. And omnibenevolent means that he can't say "well, I can do that, I just don't want to."
Alright, enough of that. Moving on to the second premise: the world could be better.
This one is based on our observations of the world. Is there room for improvement? I'd certainly say so. Unless you believe that we live in a perfect world (in which case I have some land in Uganda I could sell you cheap
), this one stays firm. I suppose you could try to get there by saying, "well, ok, there's suffering, but that's impossible to get rid of, so the world IS as good as it can be. If we stopped people from getting lung cancer while they smoked they wouldn't learn their lesson, if we stopped Clyde from raping his 4 year old step-daughter we'd be abridging free will and that's worse, if Jim weren't hit by a bus and paralyzed he'd never have found his wife in therapy. The devil causes suffering, God can't stop him. And God can't stop earthquakes and genetic defects." None of which holds water.If cigarrettes didn't harm you then you wouldn't learn the lesson of "don't smoke", true, but on the other hand there'd be no reason against smoking. There would be no "lesson" to learn.
If Clyde were stopped from raping his step-daughter (or anyone else were stopped from doing a bad thing) that would abrogate their free will, true, but in some cases--like the child-rape--eliminating some free will is by far the better deal. Any person or government who could stop such a crime with no effort and no inuries, but decided not to, would be considered horrifically negligent. If God is Omni^3, he fits that description--he's a person, and probably in charge, he can fix it with no effort, and he doesn't.
As for Jim getting hit by the bus and other such "big picture, larger plan" excuses, none of them hold water. An Omni^3 god could have them run into each other in a diner rather than have one get run over by a bus. Anything gained through pain and adversity could also be gained through sun and rainbows and puppies if an omnipotent and omniscient being decided to swing things that way.
Saying that suffering comes from the devil, and God can't do anything about it, is rather bad too. If satan is an impersonal force, like earthquakes and genetics and famine, then there's nothing stopping our omnipotent god from sticking him in a magic 8-ball so that he's powerless and gets shaken by 10-year-olds wondering about their crushes (satan always answers "not a chance" in those situations, unfortunately). If he's a personal force, a dude with free will, then the same arguments apply to him that would apply to Clyde the Child Rapist in my earlier examples. And if he's powerful enough to stop God from messing with him, then God isn't omnipotent.
The last one, God can't stop genetic defects and earthquakes, is just silly. Omnipotent, remember?
So, in the end, we can't throw out the second premise (world could be better) because we get evidence to the contrary all the time. Even a tiny inconvenience to one person for one millisecond is enough to prove that the world could be improved. The first premise (Omni^3) can't be true at the same time as the second, because an Omni^3 would make the world as good as possible. One has to be wrong, and evidence for the first premise (world coudl be better) is stronger than the evidence for the Omni^3.
So, God isn't Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent. One or more of them is missing. Maybe he's omnipotent and omniscient, but he doesn't feel like interfering (deism, anyone?). Or, the simplest explanation (and the one I go by), God doesn't exist in the first place.
That's the Problem of Evil in a very large nutshell. Perhaps a coconut shell. If you spot any holes in my logic, lemme know. Hopefully you can understand where we're coming from with this a little better now
No, he's merely trying to argue that the theist's worldview is internally incoherent. If there is a God, then (he argues), we would not expect to see as much suffering in the world. If there was a giant pink elephant floating in my room, I would be able to see it.
