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Some Reasons to Believe that There Is No God 85
Given these alternatives, did God have an adequate reason to let
this baby suffer and die? I cannot see any. I bet you can t either. If
God did have some reason to let this baby suffer and die, He could
tell us His reason, and He would have no adequate reason not to
tell us. Thus, since we see no adequate reason for it, this baby s suf-
fering is evidence that there is no God who has all of the features
in the traditional conception.
Notice that each bit of unjustified evil is evidence against God, ac-
cording to this argument. If I claimed to be all-good, one bad act
would refute me. If I claimed to be all-powerful, you could disprove
this claim by finding one thing that I cannot lift. Similarly, even one
bit of unjustified evil disproves the existence of God. Still, it is worth
adding that there is lots of evil in the world. Many children through
the centuries have been born with intestinal blockages. There are
many more kinds of birth defects that lead to short lives filled with
intense suffering. Every day many children die from disease or mal-
nutrition. The world includes floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes,
earthquakes, lightning, and many other natural disasters. Children and
adults get trapped under rubble and then die after hours of horrible
suffering. Take any individual natural disaster. An all-powerful God
could prevent this natural disaster from occurring. He could do so
without harming people as much as they are harmed by the natural
disaster. So there seems to be no adequate reason why He should let
these natural disasters occur. That means that God would not let them
occur if He were all-good. But they do occur. So there is ample evi-
dence against the existence of any all-powerful, all-good God.
That s the basic idea, but my argument can be presented more
formally and generally like this:
1. If there were an all-powerful and all-good God, then there
would not be any evil in the world unless that evil is logically
necessary for an adequately compensating good.
2. There is lots of evil in the world.
3. Much of that evil is not logically necessary for any adequately
compensating good.
4. Therefore, there is no God who is all-powerful and all-good.
Arguments like this are sometimes said to show that evil is logically
inconsistent with an all-good and all-powerful God. I do not claim that
86 God?
much here. The point of my argument is, instead, that evil is evidence
against the existence of an all-good and all-powerful God, at least when
that evil is not logically necessary for any adequately compensating
good. Thus, my argument is a version of what is called  the eviden-
tial argument from evil rather than  the logical argument from evil.
This argument depends on the notion of evil, which needs to be
explained. When you call people evil, you probably think that their
motives and characters are morally bad. In contrast, I will use the
term  evil more broadly to include anything that is harmful or bad,
even if no moral agent causes it or could prevent it. In this wide
sense, there are many disagreements about what is evil, but I need
not settle them here. The only examples that I need are obvious.
Under  evil, I include intense pain (or suffering), serious disabili-
ties (mental and physical), and death. There are probably also other
evils. I do not deny, for example, that unfairness and injustice (both
distributive and retributive) are evils. Thus, I do not assume any
crude form of utilitarianism. The reason why I focus on pain, dis-
ability, and death is only that there are plenty of these evils for my
argument, and there is less question that they are evils. The other
evils are harder to identify and more questionable, so I will not use
them in my argument. In fact, I don t even need all of the items on
my list of evils. Even if one item on my list is questioned, the oth-
ers should be enough. But it does strike me and almost everyone
else as obvious that pain, disabilities, and death are evils.
What makes these things evil? That is a tough question that I do
not need to answer here. It is enough for my argument that these
things are evil, even if it is not clear what makes them evil or what
it means to call them evil. Still, if you demand a general account of
evil, my colleague Bernard Gert plausibly identifies an evil as any-
thing that all rational people avoid for themselves unless they have
an adequate reason to want it. Pain, disability, and death are evils
because anyone who fails to avoid them without an adequate reason
is, to that extent, irrational.
Of course, we often do have an adequate reason to accept pain,
disability, and even death. I pay my dentist to drill my teeth in very
painful ways. Is this crazy? It would be, if the drilling did not serve
any purpose; but a trip to the dentist is not irrational because the
dentist prevents more pain in the future.
Some Reasons to Believe that There Is No God 87
When is an evil justified? Only when it is necessary to gain some
good or to prevent some evil. If I could prevent tooth decay with an
innocuous pill rather than by paying a dentist to drill my teeth, it
would normally be stupid to choose the drill over the pill. Moreover, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]