Few questions are as persistent and prevalent in the discourse surrounding religion as the simplest one of them all. Children and Redditors often ask it and it goes something like this: “if God is real, why do bad things happen?”
The answers one gets to this simple question are vague and condescending and “something, something free will” or “God’s greater plan” are the typical answers one is likely to receive. But, anyone who approaches the question seriously and with an open mind finds that it’s a deep rabbit hole that merits a more serious discussion.
Before we dig in, I want to stress a point that I haven’t fully elucidated in my discussion of metaphysics to date. The notion that this stuff is too complicated to understand and takes years of specialized education or mystical powers to approach is nonsense. If one can understand simple logic and “if, then” statements then one can understand theology. Don’t let yourself be gaslit into blindly trusting the experts in any field, especially this one. Only lazy, dumb or emotionally-compromised people find themselves baffled by this sort of thing, and I don’t believe that anyone who has read the series in good faith up to this point can be characterized as such.
So, let us rephrase the question before going any further. Let us ask instead: “what is the origin of Evil?” or “how did Evil come to be?” This question ties in neatly with the explanatory epistemological query: “how do we define Evil?”
Let’s try a metaphor wherein an apple and an orange suddenly come into being. For our purposes, the apple is a stand-in for Good and the orange for Evil. Great, so the answer to our question becomes quite simple. If God created both the orange and the apple, then God created Good as well as Evil.
Simple, right?
Wrong. This is already a difficult concept for many people to wrap their heads around. Whenever I am told that “free will” is the explanation for the origin of Evil, I find that the discussion hits a wall and if I bring up the example of the apple and the orange, it comes to a screeching halt. All I am saying is that for us to have the ability to choose between two different things i.e., Good or Evil/Apple or Orange, these options have to first exist, right? Still following? The ability to choose between one or the other doesn’t explain the origin of these options. It might, however, give an explanation for why these options were created i.e., to allow people a choice, or something like that.
The reason that people seem unable to follow this simple train of logic is because it seems to imply that God created Evil. Think about it: if you believe that one supreme deity created everything, then if Evil exists, it was also created by this deity, no?
Let’s take a look at what Churchian metaphysics have to say on this topic.
Here is where things get interesting. See, Augustine was the first to formulate the Church’s position on the topic and by doing so charted a new course for our civilization. To get away from having to say that God created Evil, Augustine made the claim that Evil does not exist - that there is only the absence of good or that while there may be an apple, there is no orange, only the absence of an apple. God’s plan or his divine will became the definition of Good and all deviations from it became defined as Evil. However, all deviations from God’s plan are simply illusions because God has factored them into his calculations anyways. How there can be any real free will or choice when the ultimate fate of our world is pre-planned makes no sense to me, but it does to Churchian dogmatics, and it’s a whole other topic that we will have to return to another time. Point being: Augustine broke with the original, first, Christians who preceded him when he created this formulation. These Gnostics held that there was an evil deity and a higher, good deity and so, within their model, they did not have to deny the existence of Evil as an intelligent, active force. Augustine was also the first to formally articulate the position that the Jews were Christian’s older brothers in faith, that they knew the secrets of the Old Testament and that therefore should be protected by the Church from the wrath of the peasants that they exploited.
We have a lot to thank ol’ Augustine for, don’t we? No wonder Rome made him a Saint.
All this is to say that we have multiple explanations for the origin of Evil and what it really is. The Churchian position is that Evil does not exist and that what we see as Evil is really an optical illusion because it is part of God’s grand design. Got it? This should sound sound familiar - just think of the Book of Job in which Satan is portrayed as an agent of God. This is because God has a master plan and, so, what we perceive as Evil is really just something that will eventually lead to a greater Good.
But this is too abstract and I feel that I am going to lose too many people if I don’t ground this discussion in something more real and tangible quick.
Let’s take the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia as our next example. As we all know, millions were butchered, starved and broken by the terror that the Jews unleashed on the lands of the former Russian empire. If you’re a religious person, the natural question to ask is: “why did God allow this to occur?”
Allow me to supply you with the official explanation of the Russian Orthodox Church on this matter.
God has a master plan. Imagine him as a chess player, moving pawns and knights around on the board to set up a final checkmate. Along the way, he has to sacrifice pieces to get the board into the position that he needs. So those millions of dead Russians were sacrificial pieces, maneuvers that God had to make to bring us closer to Judgement Day. What we see as Evil (the mass killings), was actually part of the greater Good - all part of the master plan, really. Evil as an independent, active force that can score victories against Good does not exist, remember. What we see as Evil is just a necessary sacrifice, a maneuver on the metaphysical chessboard to bring us closer to the end of the world and Christ’s return.
Unsurprisingly, Dostoevsky wrote about this as well. Back in his day, the Turks were slaughtering slavic villages in the Balkans and committing heinous war crimes on a hapless population much like the Bolsheviks would go on to do. Dostoevsky understood Church theology and understood that, technically, this was all part of God’s plan, at least, according to the priests. He, however, wrote that the sacrifice was too great - that even if this was a part of God’s plan, it could not be justified. Unlike boilerplate atheism, his criticism was actually poignant and well-thought through because he wasn’t denying the existence of metaphysics and higher realities, but subtly asking questions about whether the Churchian interpretation of these higher realities was correct. And one has to wonder what he would have written and thought if he had he lived to see the wondrous events that the 20th century had in store for Russia. Something tells me that if he had heard the Church officially declare that God needed more martyrs in heaven, which is why he let the Bolsheviks come to power in Russia and slaughter Christians (not making this up), that Dostoevsky would have some choice words for the priests pushing this explanation. Alas, the task falls on my unworthy shoulders.
Here’s what I’ve been driving at with my series of essays on metaphysics.
That 1) this stuff can and should be understood by thinking people and that 2) there are alternative models out there - the choice is not between atheism and Abrahamic dogmatism.
If we start seeing the destructive results of a certain kind of thinking, we can simply change our way thinking. Revisit our assumptions. Revise our models.
After all, history is filled with clever men like Augustine writing essays on topics near and dear to their hearts whose postulates either fall to the wayside because of the political realities of their day or are adopted by the powers that be and then accepted as dogma going forward. We can always go back and say, “yeah, that guy really didn’t think this through” if we summon up the courage to do so.
Clearly, I believe that Churchianity is flawed and fails to adequately address the problem of Evil. Side-stepping the problem and claiming that Evil doesn’t really exist was a clever workaround, but more and more, I am starting to believe that a serious study of Evil would benefit and protect us. Ponerology deserves a fair shake.
The problem is that if one assumes that one totally good and totally omnipotent God is in control of everything, then the concept of Evil morphs into the concept of “the Greater Good”. Me, I reject any plan that involves the mass slaughter of my people. If a deity wants to sacrifice my people as a part of his greater plan, then I reject such a deity. I don’t deny his existence, mind you, because that would be akin to closing your eyes and thinking that a mugger will go away because you do so. But I sure as hell won’t prostrate myself and worship the thug just because he got the jump on me.
Luckily, there’s almost certainly a better metaphysical model that I can fall back on that provides a more clear explanation for what Evil is and how to combat it. Here, I don’t even have to build something new from scratch - traditional cultures the world over have already given the problem plenty of thought. Gnostics, Zoroastrians, “Pagans” and many others had no problems labeling one or more deities as being active agents of Evil. In other words, their metaphysics is different from Christianity’s because they acknowledge that Evil actually exists. Therefore, when something bad happens, they don’t have to say that it’s actually good-in-disguise and that we should thank Yahweh for bringing calamity upon us to punish us for our sins and bring the destruction of the world closer.
I say that the first step in combatting any problem is acknowledging that it exists. That there are hostile ethnic groups that want to destroy us. That psychopaths and sociopaths walk among us and that we’re not just imagining things. That Evil is organized and intelligent and steals marches on us in the night.
This kind of thinking lends itself to a proactive mindset at the very least. One can no longer content oneself with mental gymnastics by which bad becomes good and the best that we can do is rejoice at the destruction of all we hold near and dear because a prophecy made by a mad Jew on a Greek island a thousand-some years ago told us that we should.
I believe that Paul got it right when he said that our world is ruled by dark archons in high places. I know that the Slavs postulated the existence of a “Black God” in their tradition.
I’m convinced that Tolkien’s Silmarillion should replace the Old Testament. I consider the Odyssey, which depicts the gods as capricious psychos without a shred of care for those beneath them, an esoteric cautionary tale and that should all adopt the mentality of Odysseus - the “man of many twists and turns”.
We must become cleverer and slyer and learn to navigate the net of intrigue that the higher powers have cast to keep us in thrall.
Bravo hit the nail on the head. I've said it before and I'll say it again. "God" is not "religion" religion is business an income stream for clerics that want to brand capture the masses. Now is their anything wrong with "religion" not necessarily some people need it, others don't and that's how it should be. "Churchiantiy" I love it! So true Christianity was hijacked and turn into Churchianity tragic but true.
As to evil it damn sure exists. How do I know? I was an orphaned black marketed baby sold to two freaks it's why I'm in the USA today (yeah you read it correctly) and was systematically abused for two decades. I've live among and faced of evil too many times in my life to list. I wrote a memoir details on my substack page. Evil is not the absence of good evil is just that, stand alone evil, evil unto itself. I've face evil and felt my skin crawl, the hair on my neck tingle and my gut telling me I'm in the presence of something very very bad evil. There is good in this world but it's not because evil is absent you've just lucked out and avoided evil for the time being. It's still all around us.
"A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there."
- Mister Eckhart (1259-1328)
The problem with this interpretation - evil as the work of a dark god - is that it begs the question of why God created him. The whole thing comes down to the conflict between evil and the three omnis. If God is omnibenevolent and omniscient, why did He create evil? The existence of evil seems to require one of those to be dropped. If God didn't create evil, then he didn't create everything, is therefore not omnipotent. Without all 3 omnis, God isn't really God - a god perhaps, but not the God of the philosophers.
If I recall, in the Silmarillion, the creator deity wasn't omniscient, and therefore didn't anticipate Sauron's rebellion.
Actually, there's tension between the omnis and free will, too. Omniscience in particular doesn't seem compatible with it, at least not if it implies perfect foreknowledge. Perhaps a more limited form of omniscience, in which God has perfect knowledge of what has been and what is, but does not have perfect knowledge of what will be, could resolve the issue.