Open Discussion: Paganism and the Problem of Evil

Hi, all!

Time for another blog post I think but, this time I want to do something a little more interactive. That being said, Ladies and Gentlemen, please put on your thinking caps and fire-up your keyboards.

I want to open up a discussion on the classic theist (those who essentially believe in a single Deity of infinite goodness, knowledge, and ability) philosophical Problem of Evil and how it may or may not relate to Paganism.

For those of you who are not yet acquainted with this age-old philosophical dilemma, the short version goes something like this:

Let us fist assume that good and evil--being dynamically opposed forces--always seek to gain the upper hand over one another. A truly good person cannot tolerate an evil act. Likewise, a truly evil person cannot tolerate a good act unless it serves to further their evil purposes.

If we hold this to be so, then we may also assume that a being of absolute goodness would want to remove evil as much as it is capable of doing. We will call such a being omnibenevolent.

Now, let us give this omnibenevolent being absolute power. There is nothing of which this being is incapable. It can do absolutely anything that it wants to; nothing is impossible for it.

These qualities--omnibenevolence and omnipotence--are both attributed to the theist version of Deity, but something about this perspective doesn't yet make sense. Why would such a god, who both seeks for the total removal of evil and is in fact capable of achieving this goal, allow for evil to exist in our universe? Is it that Deity is not as good as we believe, or it is just not as powerful as we think? Is there any way to reconcile these two attributes with the presence of evil?

It becomes immediately obvious why this problem would be of great concern to theists of all religions and just about every monotheistic philosopher has tried to provide an acceptable answer. Some of those offered include "There is no such thing as evil,"--an argument which hinges on metaphysics more than anything and is widely regarded by philosophers as a cop-out.

Even if we say that evil exists in no ontological sense there is still the matter of the cruel and horrific things which fully sentient creatures are capable of doing to one another. Certainly, we may say that suffering is an evil which humanity and other living beings have to endure far more often than seems reasonable or necessary. If we argue that suffering exists only in the mind then it may still be said to exist. We may even consider psychological anguish to be infinitely worse than simple physical pain.

Another answer which is widely regarded as a cop-out is the Free Will argument: "Evil exists because God could not give human beings truly free will without letting them have the option to perform evil acts. Thus, evil exists." The problem with this argument is that we are still talking about an all-powerful Deity and--in most theist traditions--one that has an unlimited amount of knowledge and creativity. Though a world in which freewill exists and evil does not is beyond our human comprehension, we're supposed to be talking about a being who is far superior to us, who's mind we can never hope to understand. While we may not be able to come-up with a solution we can imagine a being who could. If God is supposedly such a being, then why did he fail?

There, in a nutshell, is the problem. Now, here's my question: Do you think that all or even some Neo Pagans avoid this problem? If so, how? What is your own perspective on this philosophical dilemma? I realize that the problem I've asked you to consider applies primarily to monotheists and theists in general, but I want to know how you think this relates to Neo Paganism, if at all. What do you think we can learn here?

Please go ahead and discuss this problem in the comments for this post. I will be reading with great interest. Naturally, I have my own perspective which I will undoubtedly give to you at great length--whether you want it or not--in the next post. For now, let's chat.

~LitheWolf