In Christian theology, a classical definition of evil is found in the work of Augustine of Hippo. He states that the evil is not a thing itself, and therefore is not brought into being by God. Instead, evil is the privation of right order. Or, to put it more simply, evil is the state of affairs when things are the way they ought not to be. So, if a mugger mugs you and steals your money, that was evil, because humans ought not to do that. And if a tsunami leaves thousands of people homeless, that’s evil, because the world ought not to be like that. (Let’s bracket why God might allow natural evil, such as the latter example, for another post).
The point is that when you talk about evil and suffering, it pre-supposes that the world is not the way it ought to be. But that means that the world ought to be some way. If the world “ought to be” any way other than it is, then that pre-supposes a designer, who had a purpose for the world, i.e. – a way the world ought to be.
So, atheists cannot use the apparently gratuitous evil in the world as a disproof that there is a God until they define what they mean by evil, and explain how this objective standard of good and evil came to exist.
So what is evil on atheism? An answer that is NOT open to atheists is the solution above, namely, that evil is a departure from the way things ought to be. Because the universe is an accident on atheism – it is purposeless – there is no way the universe ought to be. We are accidents on atheism. There is no way we ought to be.
So evil must mean one of two things on atheism:
- Evil means something that the atheist finds personally distasteful. It is a subjective preference that each person decides for themselves. Just as some people don’t like broccoli – some people don’t like murder or tsunamis. It’s up to each person. But that cannot be used as an argument against God, because who says that God’s moral purposes ought to be connected to the personal moral preferences of atheists? It won’t work.
- Evil is what society says is counter to the social conventions of a particular time and place. If we decide that murder is against our society’s conventions today, then for that time and place, murder is “evil”. But then, not signaling when you turn right at a stop sign is also “evil”. It’s all just made-up conventions. And again, it is difficult to see why God should be bound by a society’s conception of good and evil, they are just conventions of accidental people, on an accidental planet, in an accidental universe. (Again, we will bracket the problem of deciding what a society is for this discussion).
Neither of those options is going to allow an atheist to claim that God is evil. Because their basis for saying so is either going to be their personal preferences or the arbitrary conventions of the culture they happen to live in in arbitrary time and place.
So, it seems to me that pressing the problem of evil is inconsistent on atheism. There is no moral standard that an atheist can use to hold God accountable, in an accidental universe. You have to pre-suppose an objective moral standard, and a designer of the universe who makes that standard and makes it applicable, before you can proceed to hold God accountable to that standard. But then, you have already assumed God in order to argue against him.
To learn more about the difficulties that atheists have in making sense of morality, I really recommend this lecture (MP3) on the problems of evil and suffering by Doug Geivett (hosted by Apologetics 315), and this short 4-page paper on the problem of evil as well.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
“There is no moral standard that an atheist can use to hold God accountable, in an accidental universe.”
This is exactly the conundrum of Job, who is no atheist, of course, but who comes to realize that to take God seriously, as God, he must demand accountability of God. In Job’s circumstances, not to do so would be tantamount to atheism.
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It seems you have overlooked atheists who suppose that there are objective morals, yet do not presuppose a supernatural being.
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I don’t think that such people have a rational grounding for objective morality. Many questions are unresolved. What is the ontology of those objective moral values and duties? How can immaterial abstract objects exist if matter is all there is? Why do the objective moral values and duties apply specifically to humans, but not other animals? How did the objective moral values and duties anticipate that humans would evolve? How could humans have free will to choose for or against the objective moral values, since all human actions are determined by genetic programming and sensory inputs in a an atheistic universe? Even if humans could choose, what would be the point of acting in line with objective morality since you die anyway whether you act against your own self-interest or not? And finally, what would be the ultimate significance of acting morally or not if there is no life after death, which there isn’t in an atheistic universe?
So just asserting objective morality on blind faith doesn’t solve the problem of rationally grounding self-sacrificial moral behavior, on atheism.
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I’m not quite sure what you are asking in this question.
Ah. Well, ‘morality’ would not exist independent of humans’ existence. In the same way that logic exists because of humans, so is the case with morality. Are you are trying to say that objective moral truths would exist even humans do not? That it is immoral to kill another human when no humans exist? That’s a bit nonsensical, isn’t it?
Again, I don’t see why this is an issue for you – especially considering that theistic morality is highly anthropocentric (i.e. O.T. animal sacrifices). I realize that objective morality would solely be in terms of humans in my world view, which would entail a sort of ‘speciel relativism’, but is that really a pertinent question? I could answer it, but it doesn’t really seem that this line of inquiry would help the discussion.
I think I’m starting to see how you mean ‘objective morality’. Objective morality, as I mean it, is not some morality that is independent of humans and, instead, should be thought of in terms of human flourishing. So, to answer your question, morality is in response to human evolution. Humans recognize certain objective truths that would prove detrimental to society (i.e. don’t kill everyone you see), as well as truths that serve to highlight one’s independence (i.e. freedom of choice).
By this same token, how do theists have the free will to choose, given that God has a ‘plan’? This is a red herring and you know it.
Because society would ostracize and punish accordingly? Ultimately, if you insist on being abstract about it, there would be no purpose. I could go around killing every other person I see and the universe wouldn’t say boo, but I’m sure the people witnessing this massacre would. There is a social contract to comport with the laws in order to live amicably amongst one another.
See above answer
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I have to agree with W.K. You have no objective morals if you leave out God. Everyone, every society then decides for themselves what will be right and wrong, and that is always subjective.
I run into this all summer long at my book-table ministry when atheists immediately charge God with evil.
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What you are referring to is relativism, not objective morality. So, I’m not quite sure how this is relevant.
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It’s relevant, because you are a relativist. You don’t actually believe in objective morality at all. Of course, I have to explain why I think that… or maybe some other commenter can.
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We ar talking about an objective morality. Morality measured against a standard. It is not relative as atheists and liberals have morality – that is, depending on the situation (situational ethics) – but a morality based upon a moral law standard. You have no standard by which to measure your morality except that whatever society says is okay.
An example is how current society is approving of homosexuality while previous societies did not. But those with an objective morality don’t care what society says, rather we care what the standard of God is.
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Glenn,
Two things:
First, I appreciate your response, but you made your assertion of me being a relativist without even hearing my argument. Are you in the habit of making grand unfounded assumptions about those who disagree with you?
Secondly, I still do not see why both you and wintery knight are of the impression that I am a relativist. I clearly set my “standard” as posing morality in terms of human flourishing. As such, we can conclude many moralistic claims (i.e. murder is always wrong, lying is usually wrong, genital mutilation is always wrong, etc., etc., etc.) If you are concerned that my position is specielly relativistic, then you must be prepared to defend your foundation for morality, as well, as theistic morality can be “accused” of the same flaw.
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If you say that morality is based on humans, humans believe different things about morality depending on the time and place. That’s what makes you a relativist. God doesn’t change – his hierarchy of moral values and duties likewise doesn’t change. That makes morality in a theistic universe objective.
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Oscar, your position is essentially utilitarianism, which I think is a kind of relativism. To show you why, here are two questions:
First, why do you assume that human flourishing is “morally good”? That is an ungrounded assertion; I might as well assume that “aardvark flourishing” or “beetle flourishing” is morally good and that moral actions are those which the flourishing of aardvarks. On what basis do you single out human beings as the polestar of your moral universe?
Second, if torturing a little girl brought immense happiness to all other people on the planet, then isn’t this action “morally good” by your definition? Indeed, we could anesthetize her so that she experienced no pain at all. Wouldn’t this action then be morally good?
If you’d like to hear someone try to defend your position, I recommend the Craig-Harris debate, which can be found here:
http://bit.ly/Apologetics315-CraigHarrisDebate
-Neil
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And some reviews of that debate:
http://www.randyeverist.com/2011/04/review-of-craig-vs-harris-debate.html
http://www.beretta-online.com/wordpress/2011/debate-review-william-lane-craig-and-sam-harris/
A general paper refuting utilitarianism:
http://afterall.net/papers/490939
A general paper explaining the moral argument:
http://afterall.net/papers/16
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I have a friend who believes in objective morality, deontological ethics to be exact, yet he is an agnostic. He couldn’t answer what makes the will good. Immanuel Kant grounded it in God because he could do no other.
There is no problem with an atheist holding to objective morality, the objective moral order is binding whether we acknowledge it or not, but there is no good reason for the moral order on atheism as WK has already pointed out. There is such a problem with the grounding, which is why naturalists deny objective morality (all you can do given naturalism).
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Something to chew on. Atheist J.L. Mackie acknowledged: “Moral properties constitute so odd a cluster of properties and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events without an all-powerful god to create them.”
J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), p. 115
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You lost me with this statement: “The point is that when you talk about evil and suffering, it pre-supposes that the world is not the way it ought to be. But that means that the world ought to be some way.”
The way I see it, the world is exactly how I would expect it to be without an an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God is pulling the strings. The world ought not to be any way except the way it is.There is evil and suffering in this world simply because…there is evil and suffering in this world. It is the believer who has to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with the existence of God. We’re all humans. We all have feelings, emotions, wants, needs, etc. I don’t need religion to tell me that having compassion for starving children is the result of your religion’s teachings.
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Paul S.,
You said, “There is evil and suffering in this world”
As an atheist your main problem is simply defining evil and suffering in a meaningful way. Your worldview prevents you from doing so.
“It is the believer who has to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with the existence of God.”
Check out the links WK provided at the end of the post. You have to reconcile how you could even define good, bad, ought, ought not, etc., in a meaningful, objective way without begging the question. Otherwise, you can’t complain about morality in any meaningful sense.
“I don’t need religion to tell me that having compassion for starving children is the result of your religion’s teachings.”
Paul, no one made this argument. You should honestly re-read WK’s post and check out the links he provides at the end.
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