The Problem of Evil

In his essay “Why God Allows Evil” Swinburne argues that the existence of evil in the world is consistent with the existence of all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good God. To start, Swinburne bases his argument on two basic types of evil: moral and natural. Moral evil encompasses all the ills resulting from human action, whether intentional or through negligence; natural evil included all evils not caused or permitted by human beings. Whereas moral evil such as abortion, murder, terrorism, or theft comes from humans acting immorally, natural evil, in the form of suffering caused by earthquakes like the Haitian’s, hurricanes such as Katrina, wild forest fires or diseases such as HIV/AIDS, results from pain and suffering that comes from anything other than human action with predictable consequences. Swinburne's argument is that God allows suffering because it's necessary to make humans good of their own accord by giving them the free will to freely choose among their competing deliberations.

To understand why moral evil is necessary, Swinburne urges us to imagine the sorts of goods an all-powerful God would bestow upon humans. In addition to pleasure and contentment, Swinburne supposes that such a God would "give us great responsibility for ourselves, each other, and the world, and thus a share in his own creative activity of determining what sort of world it is to be."1 This kind of responsibility requires that humans have free will because we cannot be responsible for our actions without the freedom to choose from other available competing options. As a consequence, humans must have the opportunity to harm other people in addition to helping them. Moreover, he argues that humans should be expected to have so...

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...ng? The response to those puzzles, according to Swinburne’s argument, is that, by having significant freedom and responsibility, people must make a choice between what would be beneficial and harmful.

Therefore, Swinburne’s argument provides the best possible answers to the old questions posed by those who argue against the existence of God based on the existence of evils. As he indicates, moral and natural evil bear upon human responsibility, which are both obligatory for human wholesomeness. In the event that these propositions don’t fully justify the necessity of evil in the world, Swinburne maintains that humans should rest assured because God will compensate the victims by providing them with an afterlife in which they will have an invaluable and worthwhile existence. Hence, the problem of evil is not a good objection to the existence of God.