by Darwin's Beagle

Created on: January 30, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

Many, if not most theists view their God as omnimax. By that I specifically mean they claim that God is omnipotent - He is powerful enough to do anything that is logically capable of being done; omniscient - He knows everything that can be logically known; and omnibenevolent - He wants and cares for what is in the best interests of all inhabitants of His creation.

The Argument from Evil refutes this possibility. Briefly, it says that if God were omnimax then evil should not be present in this world. Evil is present in this world therefore God cannot be omnimax.

Theists will often "answer" the argument from evil by saying the reason evil exists is because of God's healthy respect for our free will. He allows us to do evil things because if he prevented them we would be nothing but helpless automatons and that would be worse than having evil in this world.

I will argue that this exegesis is inadequate and wrong. I will do this by presenting my variant of the argument from evil ... the Argument from Unnecessary Suffering.

Free will is such a poorly defined concept that once it is brought up in an argument, the argument drifts into the netherworld of what is meant by free will and how the concept applies to specific examples of evil. The argument from unnecessary suffering avoids the free-will defense altogether.

THE ARGUMENT FROM UNNECESSARY SUFFERING

For the purposes of this discussion, unnecessary suffering is defined as:

(1) Suffering that does not lead to some higher good, or
(2) Suffering beyond the absolute minimum that it would take to achieve whatever higher good one may wish to propose.

In the traditional argument from evil, free will is used as THE higher good that is achieved by allowing evil. In this argument if that is true and it corresponds to the minimal amount of suffering possible while still allowing free will then it is NOT unnecessary suffering and we do not have to consider it.

The logic of the argument from unnecessary suffering is straight-forward:

(1) If God is omniscient, then he would know unnecessary suffering exists.
(2) If God were omnipotent, then he would have the power to prevent unnecessary suffering.
(3) If God were omnibenevolent, then he would want to prevent unnecessary suffering.
(4) Unnecessary suffering exists, therefore God cannot be omnimax.

The logic of the argument appears unassailable so its validity rests solely on whether or not unnecessary suffering actually exists. I have two arguments that it does; (A) The Argument from a Specific

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