1 Can God Allow Suffering?
1.1 Introduction
Imagine that you are a tourist, visiting the distant country of Nornia. You see some wondrous sights: stunning skyscrapers, beautiful parks, galleries full of masterpieces. You also see extreme poverty and injustice, poorly designed highways, grossly corrupt government agencies, innocent people serving life sentences in prison, and many other terrible things. After seeing all this, suppose you are told that Nornia is run by a wise and compassionate ruler with limitless power, who keeps careful track of everything that goes on in his country. You wouldn’t believe that for a second.
Now look around the world. You’ll see some wondrous sights: stunning mountain peaks, beautiful prairies, staggering artistic and athletic talent. But you will also find poverty and injustice, a planet afflicted by extreme weather and natural disasters, bodies afflicted by all manner of diseases and injuries, and many other terrible things. Now, suppose you are told that this is the work of a maximally powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect deity. You shouldn’t believe it for a second.
There is no God, and we can know that there is no God simply by reflecting on the impressive variety of evils and sufferings we encounter in the world. Or so I shall argue. After laying out the argument (1.2–1.3), I address three attempts to explain why God would allow the sorts of suffering we endure: because suffering enables us to appreciate the good things we have (1.4), because suffering is necessary for acquiring valuable character traits (1.5), or because God must permit suffering in order for us to have free will (1.6). I then consider the response that God has his reasons for allowing suffering, but that those reasons are kept hidden from us (1.7).
1.2 The Argument from Suffering
My argument that God doesn’t exist is easy to state and highly intuitive:
By ‘suffering’, here, I mean any pain or discomfort that living beings experience—large or small, physical or emotional.
The first premise, AS1, is entirely uncontroversial. Even if your life has gone pretty smoothly, you could still fill a book with the pains and sufferings—large and small, physical and emotional—that you have experienced. And that’s just one life.
To see the idea behind the second premise, AS2, note that God is supposed to be a perfect being. In particular, he is supposed to be omnipotent (that is, maximally powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (morally perfect). Let’s call a being with all three of these qualities an omnibeing.
- Omnibeing
- An omnibeing is a being that is omnipotent (maximally powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (morally perfect).
Now, consider how an omnibeing would react to any suffering that might crop up in the world. Since she is omnipotent, there are no bounds whatsoever on what she is able to do. So, if she noticed some suffering occurring, it would be entirely within her power to stop it if she wanted to. Since she is omnibenevolent, she would want the best for everyone. So, if she noticed some suffering occurring, she would want to prevent it. It follows that she would prevent any suffering that she notices. But since she is omniscient, she knows absolutely everything; nothing that happens in the universe escapes her notice, and that includes all of our suffering. So, being an omnibeing, she would notice our suffering, she would prevent it if she were able to, and she would be able to. So she would prevent it.
Put another way, the only way for there to be suffering if there were an omnibeing around is if the omnibeing wanted there to be suffering, couldn’t prevent it, or didn’t realize it was happening—none of which seems possible given the definition of ‘omnibeing’. So, if there is suffering, it must be because there is no omnibeing around to stop it. That is the idea behind AS2.
What I expect most believers to say in response to the Argument from Suffering is that God allows suffering because there is some greater good that can be obtained only by those who have endured certain kinds of suffering. But in trying to identify what that greater good is, it’s important to use your imagination. For instance, you might be tempted to say that God allows people to die—despite all the suffering involved both for the victim and for those left behind—because if no one ever died, then the world would quickly become overpopulated, and there would be even more suffering due to our limited resources. But it’s not as if an omnibeing would have to choose between death and overpopulation. With limitless power, an omnibeing could easily have created a world for us with unlimited space and unlimited resources, a world that would never be in danger of becoming overpopulated.
Accordingly, an adequate account of why an omnibeing would allow suffering must identify some greater good that would be absolutely unobtainable in the absence of suffering. I’ll examine three different proposals—that suffering is necessary for appreciating the good things we have, that suffering is necessary for building valuable character traits, and that allowing suffering is necessary for free will—and I will argue that none provides an adequate response to the argument.
1.3 Refining the Argument
Before getting into these specific proposals, however, let me make two concessions.
First, my defense of AS2 presupposed that God is an omnibeing. But some people who believe in God may be willing to admit that God is not an omnibeing. You might say that God isn’t omnipotent: he knows all about your toothache, and he wishes he could do something about it, but he just isn’t able to. Or you might say that God isn’t omniscient: he would end the toothache if he knew about it, but he genuinely has no idea that you have a toothache right now. Or you might say that God isn’t omnibenevolent: he knows about your toothache and could stop it if he wanted to, but he really couldn’t care less about you and your toothache.
Admittedly, the Argument from Suffering will be ineffective against someone who believes in an imperfect God like this. At the same time, I suspect that a great many believers will be unwilling to admit that God is imperfect, which means the argument is still a problem for them. For the sake of clarity, I will reformulate the argument below, so that it explicitly targets only those who believe in an omnibeing.
Second, it’s hard to deny that there are some good things that truly are unobtainable without at least some suffering. For instance, there’s something valuable about the sense of accomplishment you feel after overcoming some obstacle. That sense of accomplishment would arguably be impossible unless there was some struggle, and there can be no struggle without suffering. In cases like these, we can see why an omnibeing might allow certain sorts of suffering.
I want to concede that even an omnibeing could and would sometimes allow people to suffer. This suggests (once again) that AS2 is overstated: even if there is an omnibeing, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we shouldn’t expect to see any suffering. That said, all I really need in order to show that there is no omnibeing is that some of the suffering we endure serves no conceivable purpose.
Let us then replace the Argument from Suffering with the following Argument from Pointless Suffering:
PS1 is admittedly more controversial than AS1, since PS1 says not just that there is suffering but that some of that suffering serves no purpose. Still, PS1 is highly plausible. For instance, even if some amount of struggle can add a good deal of value to a life, it is hard to imagine what purpose could possibly be served by the insurmountable and demoralizing challenges that so many people face, simply trying to find food and shelter. The idea behind PS2 is that an omnibeing can allow suffering only if there is some good reason for allowing it. But, by definition (of ‘pointless’), there is no good reason for allowing pointless suffering. So, if there is pointless suffering, it must be because there is no omnibeing around to prevent it.
Notice that in the original Argument from Suffering the first premise (AS1) was entirely uncontroversial and the second premise (AS2) was the one to challenge. Now the reverse is true. The second premise (PS2) is now uncontroversial—an omnibeing can’t allow suffering for no reason—and it’s the first premise that I expect believers to challenge.
Notice also that I’ve rephrased the argument so that the conclusion is that there is no omnibeing, leaving open that God exists but that he is weak, ignorant, or morally imperfect. For simplicity, I’ll continue to use the term ‘God’ below, but that should be understood as shorthand for ‘a God who is an omnibeing’.
1.4 The Appreciated Goods Defense
Let’s turn now to the suggestion that the point of suffering—the reason that God allows suffering—is to enable us to appreciate good things. After all, the idea goes, if we were in a constant state of pleasure and contentedness, that would just strike us as a normal, unremarkable baseline. And it’s better for us to appreciate the good things we have than merely to have the good things without in any way appreciating them. So, since God wants the best for us, he would want us to appreciate the good things we have, and he would therefore permit all of the suffering necessary for attaining that appreciation. Call this The Appreciated Goods Defense.
On closer inspection, however, it just isn’t plausible that no one could appreciate the good things they have without suffering. Again, you have to use your imagination. Suppose God wanted to create beings who experience nothing but pleasure but also wanted them to be able to appreciate that pleasure. He could do so by arranging for their pleasure to keep increasing at every moment. That way, they can always look back on their earlier states of pleasure and feel appreciative that they are now so much better off. With this sort of possibility in mind, it is hard to see why there would have to be any suffering in order for people to appreciate good things.
One might object that there’s a limit to the amount of pleasure that human beings are capable of experiencing, perhaps connected to the quantity of serotonin our brains are capable of generating. But even if we actually have these psychological or neurological limitations, surely there’s nothing to prevent an omnibeing like God from removing those limitations if he wanted to.
Moreover, even if it were true that some suffering is needed in order to appreciate good things, there surely is no need for all the suffering we endure. A chilly, overcast day now and then can help one appreciate warm sunny days, but there is surely no need for endless, soul-crushing Midwest winters. A bit of back pain now and then can help one appreciate a healthy body, but there is surely no need for debilitating, chronic back pain and other such maladies. If God’s intention in allowing suffering is just to make it possible for us to appreciate good things, then so much of the suffering we endure still seems entirely pointless; it serves no purpose. Accordingly, even if the Appreciated Goods Defense were able to account for some of our suffering, it gives us no reason to reject PS1 of the Argument from Pointless Suffering.
1.5 The Character Building Defense
Let’s try out a different objection to PS1. Here the idea is that there are certain highly valuable character traits that can be developed only in the face of adversity, failure, temptation, and other sources of suffering. Take courage, for instance. If there were no suffering, then nothing could be dangerous, and in a world without danger no one has the opportunity to become courageous. Similar points can be made for empathy, loyalty, perseverance, self-control, forgiveness, and trustworthiness. In short, building character requires a potential for suffering. And, the idea goes, these character traits are sufficiently valuable to justify allowing all of the suffering necessary for cultivating them. Call this The Character Building Defense.
What’s nice about the Character Building Defense is that it’s able to account for such a wide range of bad things, including some extreme forms of suffering. Without profound acts of betrayal, there could be no profound acts of forgiveness. Without the horrors and hardships of war, no one could reach the levels of courage and selflessness that soldiers attain. Since these sufferings are necessary in order to have the best kind of world—one with courageous and forgiving people—we can see why God would allow them. Furthermore, the Character Building Defense seems equipped to handle the alleged examples of pointless suffering mentioned in the previous section: by enduring chronic back pain and brutal winters, one learns perseverance and endurance.
Ultimately, though, the Character Building Defense fails to account for all apparent cases of pointless suffering. For while some soldiers find that the horrors of war strengthen their moral character, others are pushed to their breaking point and return home with debilitating PTSD. Or take someone who is tortured mercilessly and then killed before the experience can help them build character. The Character Building Defense seems unable to explain the purpose of the suffering in such cases.
Proponents of the Character Building Defense may insist that at least the friends and family of the traumatized soldier or torture victim get to develop valuable character traits as a result of their own grief and sadness. But it seems deeply at odds with the omnibenevolence of an omnibeing to allow someone to suffer terribly for someone else’s benefit. In any event, we can sidestep this response by focusing on cases where the people suffering have no friends or family whose moral character is enhanced by the suffering, or cases where the tragedy pushes the friends and family of the victim beyond their breaking points. All it takes is one such case to show that PS1 is true.
1.6 The Free Will Defense
Let’s consider one last version of the appeal to greater goods, which turns on the idea that allowing suffering is a necessary condition for free will. Here, the idea is that a world in which people have the ability to do things of their own free will has to be a world in which suffering is permitted. God could force us to always do the right thing, but being forced to perform an action is incompatible with doing it freely. And free will is plausibly a very valuable thing: a world in which people are able to freely choose to do the right thing is superior to a world in which everyone is an automaton, performing only kind and wholesome actions but never because they freely choose to do so. This, the idea goes, is why God decided to give us free will, even though that requires allowing some suffering. Call this The Free Will Defense.
The Free Will Defense is well equipped to handle many of the alleged cases of pointless suffering considered above. No one can ever freely make good choices unless God steps back and permits people to sometimes make bad choices, including warring and torturing. So, the Free Will Defense does look more promising than the Character Building Defense. Even so, we shouldn’t be satisfied by the Free Will Defense either.
First, the Free Will Defense only accounts for suffering caused by other humans. It goes no way towards explaining how an omnibeing could allow suffering caused by disease or scarcity or natural disasters or animals. There could still be free will in a world without earthquakes, droughts, dog bites, back pain, and cold winters.
Second, it’s not even clear that the Free Will Defense can account for all the human-caused suffering in the world. Certainly, there could still be plenty of valuable freedom in the world if, now and then, God discreetly intervened to prevent a genocide or a terrorist attack or a third-degree burn. By analogy, a loving parent can allow their toddler the freedom to make their own mistakes, but would still intervene if the kid is about to step off a cliff or fire up a chainsaw.
Third, it’s not even clear that there could be free will in a world in which God exists. After all, since God is supposed to be omniscient, he already knows everything you’re going to do before you do it. To see how this causes trouble for the Free Will Defense, let’s focus on just one example of an alleged free action. You see a fifty-dollar bill fall out of someone’s pocket. You grab it, and you’re pretty confident that no one would notice if you kept it for yourself. But you decide to do the right thing and return it.
If God is an omnibeing, he must already know what you were going to do with the money. Otherwise, there’d be something he doesn’t know, and he wouldn’t be omniscient. But in order for God to know in advance that you’d return the money, it had to already have been settled that you were going to return the money. God couldn’t have known what you were going to do if it was still an open possibility that you were going to keep the money. But if it was already settled in advance that you were going to return it, then it’s not true that you could have kept it. And if you couldn’t have behaved any differently from how you actually behaved, then what you did wasn’t really up to you. It wasn’t a free action after all!
Of course, there’s nothing special about the particular example I chose. The same problem arises for any allegedly free action. What that shows is that the Free Will Defense is a complete nonstarter. Suffering can’t be explained as something God permits in order to make room for free will, since any world with an omnibeing—who already knows in advance everything that’s going to happen—is already a world without free will.
1.8 Conclusion
I have argued that the sorts of suffering we find in the world cannot be reconciled with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God. We have examined a number of attempts to reconcile them, which involved pointing to one or another purpose that might be served by the suffering, but we found that these attempts cannot make sense of the full range of suffering that people endure. Finally, I argued that it is not reasonable to believe that the suffering is all in service of some unknown greater good that, due to our limited perspective, we have been unable to identify.
Reflection Questions
- Is it possible to escape the objections raised in Sections 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 by combining the Appreciated Goods Defense, the Character Building Defense, and/or the Free Will Defense?
- God is widely believed to reward people with eternal happiness in heaven. Could this be turned into a response to the Argument from Pointless Suffering? Why or why not?
- One might respond to the Argument from Pointless Suffering by insisting that God has to allow bad things to happen to certain people, because they deserve it and—being perfectly just—God has to give people what they deserve. Is this an adequate response? How about bad things that happen to good people? Or animals?
- Can the Hidden Reasons Defense be defended against the objections raised in Section 1.7? In particular, what do you think about the claim that “there is no difference between what we know about Nornia and what we know about the universe that could make it reasonable to believe in hidden reasons in the one case but not the other”?
Sources and Resources
The “Argument from Suffering” is often called “The Problem of Evil.” But that label is also used more broadly to describe the problem of how to make sense of evil in the world.
The argument has been around for a very long time. The Roman philosopher Lactantius (d. 325 CE) attributes it to the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (d. 270 BCE):
God, he says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? or why does He not remove them? (Lactantius 1885, ch. XIII)
David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion contains a classic and influential discussion of the argument. Here is his statement of the basic dilemma:
Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil? (Hume 2007, pt. 10) (free text)
If you would like to explore the wide-ranging history of philosophical work on evil and suffering, there are several episodes from the History of Philosophy without any Gaps podcast that touch on the subject.
The contemporary debate was shaped by Mackie (1955), who offers a robust and influential defense of the argument. In response, Hick (1966) offers a version of the Character Building Defense, and Plantinga (1974) offers a version of the Free Will Defense. Rowe (1979) further refines and defends the argument.
For additional introductory material, Metcalf (2014) is a 1000-Word Philosophy article on the topic, and Haslanger (2013) is a Wireless Philosophy video lecture:
Perry (1999) is an approachable introduction to the topic in the form of a dialogue. Frances (2013) is a “comprehensive textbook,” of the sort that might be assigned if you were taking an entire course devoted to the subject.
A short story can be like an extended thought experiment, opening up new ideas about a topic. For this, Chiang (2002) is useful.
It is important to remember that the Argument from Suffering is not meant as an abstract exercise. If you accept the premises, you should accept the conclusion, even if that means abandoning other beliefs you hold dear. Antony (2007) offers a personal autobiographical essay, about how she was driven by the problem of evil to abandon her faith. Adams (2000) offers an alternative model: she also takes the problem seriously, even as she holds on to her faith. (For a taste of her approach, you can also listen to her appearance on the “Philosophy Bites” podcast (Adams 2009).
If thinking about evil has sparked your interest, another nice resource is Breyer (2019). The best way I know to get access to this without paying for it is to sign up for a library card at one of our local public libraries, which give you access to it via Kanopy.
Stump (1985) offers a response grounded in the specific commitments of Christian theology. She suggests that, because of Adam’s fall, our flaws need to “mended”, something even an omnipotent being cannot do by fiat.
Ekstrom (2004) argues that suffering is, at least in some cases, a form of religious experience, and so may be justified on those grounds: “Why,” she asks, “would the divine agent permit instances of evil? Perhaps a reply applicable to some instances of personal suffering is this: in order to provide occasions in which we can perceive God, understand him to some degree, know him, even meet him directly.”
Ali Mobini (2013) offers a response grounded in the Qur’an, arguing that the experience of evil and suffering is necessary to “remove our epistemic deficiencies and make us ready for harmony with God.”
If you are interested in breaking out of the traditional way of framing the problem, Clack (2013) surveys feminist critiques. These include worries about the construction of the concept of evil itself, ways in which traditional attempts to respond to the argument often downplay the suffering of victims, and an emphasis on the ways that evil is often a feature of interpersonal relationships.
If you would like to explore how the problem develops in a context not dominated by the “Religions of the Book” (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), see Perkins (2014), a book on the problem of evil in Chinese philosophy.
The apparent conflict between an “omnibeing” and evil is just one of several philosophical puzzles about the idea of such a being. Another is the problem of divine foreknowledge: how can an omniscient being know contingent facts about the future? Pike (1965) is an influential treatment of this problem. And another is the paradox of omnipotence: can an omnipotent being create a stone that is heavier than she can lift (Frankfurt 1964)?