11/27/2022
The Waukesha Parade attacker, Darrell Brooks, blamed the Christian God for his actions on November 21st, 2021, when he murdered 6 people and injured over 60 others. This is the problem of evil in philosophy of religion. Why would a deity which is both omnipotent & omniscient allow for evil to exist? As Epicurus famously said:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but unable? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able & willing? Whence then is evil?”
Citations:
Hume, David. Dialogues & Natural History of Religion. Buy here!
Leibniz, Gottfried. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil. Buy here!
Pojman, Louis P., and Michael C. Rea, editors. Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology. Thomson/Wadsworth, 2008. Buy here!
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but unable? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able & willing? Whence then is evil?”
Epicurus
On November 21st, 2021, Darrell Brooks drove his car through a Christmas Parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin killing 6 people and injuring over 60 others. He chose to represent himself at trial, and during his closing argument to the jury, one of his excuses was basically God made me do it. Jesus took the wheel and drove over all those people. There were some people that didn’t take this excuse well.
But, is Brook’s wrong that God made him do it? If you’re a Christian, like most of the people present at trial, and most people in the United States, there’s a couple of basic tenets you have to believe in.
- There is only one God;
- God is omnipotent or all-powerful;
- God is omniscient or all-knowing;
- Jesus Christ is the Lord & Savior;
- God promises the Kingdom of Heaven to the faithful.
There’s a lot more nuance depending on your flavor of Christianity, but that’s the jist.
The Christian God is an omni-God: omnipotent, omniscient and an overall a pretty important dude. Most Christians believe God gave humans free will. If you have two doors before you: drive through a parade or not drive through a parade, it’s your choice which door you go through. But, if God is all-knowing, meaning he literally knows all things that have ever happened, are currently happening, and will happen in the future, are there really two options to choose from? An omniscient God knew Darrell Brooks was going to drive through that parade, presumably billions of years before November 21st, 2021. An omnipotent God wills forth all of reality, which means He must have willed for Brooks to do what happened.
In philosophy of religion, this is known as the problem of Evil. Why would a Good Omni-God allow evil to exist? Considering how much misery perniciously persists in our world, how can we be sure God even is good?
Scottish Philosopher David Hume (who was a boss) asked this question in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion:
“His power we allow infinite: Whatever He wills is executed: But neither man nor any other animal are happy: Therefore He does not will their happiness. His wisdom is infinite: He is never mistaken in choosing the means to any end: But the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity: Therefore it is not established for that purpose.”
Hume, David. Dialogues & Natural History of Religion.
Now, some might say, you can’t have good without evil: they’re necessary opposites. Just like you can’t have tall without short, far without near, light without dark, you can’t know what goodness is without evil.
Another philosopher, this time of the German variety, Gottfried Leibniz tried to explain the problem of evil. Unlike Hume, Leibniz was deeply religious. He believed in Jesus, an omni-God, free will, the whole shebang. Leibniz wrote what was called a Theodicy, or a vindication of God in relation to the problem of evil.
Leibniz justifies evil’s existence in several ways, one of which is that evil can be used as a method to create even greater good. Leibniz uses this example: say you’re a General sending an army into battle, and a quarter of your troops die (including David who was two days from retirement; poor David had a wife & kids… and several mistresses, a lot of people are going to be upset by this), but you win the battle, or hell, you win the whole war. This is an example of an evil (the death of David and those other dudes) that brought about a greater Good (Victory in war).
Of course, this just begs the question, is it really an evil if it brings about greater goodness? We would typically call this a necessary evil because certain acts, like murder, are just considered evil.
Ultimately, this isn’t a problem for someone like me. I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe God or Jesus, or however your divine entity self-identifies, made Darrell Brooks do anything. I just think Brooks is a sociopathic piece of shit. The problem of evil is only a problem for people who believe in an omni-God like Christians & Muslims.
