Trivial and horrendous evils

Nobody seriously runs an argument against the existence of God from trivial evils, like hangnails or mosquito bites.

Why not? Here is a hypothesis. There are so very many possible much greater goods—goods qualitatively and not just quantitatively much greter—that it would be easy to suppose that God’s permitting the trivial evil could promote or enhance one of these goods to a degree sufficient to yield justification.

On the other hand, if we think of horrendous evils, like the torture of children, it is difficult to think of much greater goods. Maybe with difficulty we can come up with one or two possibilities, but not enough to make it easy to suppose a justification for God’s permission of the evil in terms of the goods.

However, if God exists, we would expect there to be an unbounded upward qualitative hierarchy of possible finite goods. God is infinitely good, and finite goods are participations in God, so we would expect a hierarchy of qualitatively greater and greater types of good that reflect God’s infinite goodness better and better.

So if God exists, we would expect there to be unknown possible finite goods that are related to the known horrendous evils in something like the proportion in which the known great finite goods are related to the known trivial evils. Thus, if God exists, there very likely is
an upward hierarchy of possible goods to which the horrendous evils of this life stand like a mosquito bite to the courage of a Socrates. If we believe in this hierarchy of goods, then it seems we should be no more impressed by the atheological evidential force of horrendous evils than the ordinary person is by the atheological evidential force of trivial evils.

There is, however, a difference between the cases. Many great ordinary goods that dwarf trivial evils, like the courage of a Socrates, are known to us. Few if any finite goods that dwarf horrendous evils are known to us. Nonetheless, if theism is true, it is very likely that such goods are possible. And since the argument from evil is addressed against the theist, it seems fair for the theist to invoke that hierarchy.

Moreover, we might ask whether our ignorance of goods higher up in the hierarchy of goods beyond the ordinary goods is not itself evidence against the existence of such goods. Here, I think the answer is that it is very little evidence. We would expect any particular finite being to be able to recognize only a finite number of types of good, and thus the fact that there are only a finite number of goods that we recognize is very little evidence against the hypothesis of the upward hierarchy of goods.

Evils that are evidence for theism

It’s mildly interesting to note, when evaluating the evidential impact of evil, that there can be evil events that would be evidence for the existence of God. For instance, suppose that three Roman soldiers who witnessed Christ’s resurrection conspired to lie that he didn’t see Christ get resurrected. That they lied that they didn’t see Christ get resurrected entails that they thought they witnessed the resurrection, and that would be strong evidence for the existence of God, even after factoring in the counterevidence coming from the evil of the lie. (After all, we already knew that there are lots of lies in the world, so learning of one more won’t make much of a difference.)

In fact, this is true even for horrendous and apparently gratuitous evils. We could imagine that the three soldiers’ lies crush someone’s hopes for the coming of the Messiah, and that could be a horrendous evil. And it could also be the case that we can’t see any possible good from the lie, and hence the lie is apparently gratuitous.

Defining horrendous evils

Marilyn Adams famously defines horrendous evils as follows:

1. Evils the participation in which (that is, the doing or suffering of which) constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant’s life could (given their inclusion in it) be a great good to him/her on the whole.

This epistemically-based definition doesn’t really capture the relevant category because of the background-dependence of reasons.

Note that the quotation above is ambiguous as to who is to have the prima facie reason: the participant or the observer. If the observer, then whether an evil is horrendous is observer-dependent, which seems quite mistaken.

If the participant, then we still have a problem (and in fact the following problems apply, with different wording, in the observer-dependent case as well). For suppose that I have fully internalized the absurd view that suffering is always good. Then no matter what the suffering is, it does not give me any prima facie reason to doubt that my life is a great good to me on the whole, and so I can never suffer a horrendous evil—yet that seems mistaken. Or, on the contrary, suppose I have internalized the nearly as absurd view that the only good life is a life without any suffering. Then any suffering gives me prima facie reason to doubt whether the my life could be a great good to me on the whole, and hence a mosquito bite is a horrendous evil—which again seems mistaken.

What if we de-epistemicize the definition, by saying something like this?

2. Evils the participation in which make the participant’s life not be a great good to him/her on the whole.

But now suppose that apart from one mosquito bite, Alice’s life is just about the “great good” line, and the mosquito bite brings the life below that line. Then by (2), the mosquito bite is a horrendous evil—and that seems mistaken.

We could try for something like this:

3. Evils such that it is metaphysically impossible for the participant’s life to be a great good to him/her on the whole.

But if we did that, then Adams’ other commitments would force her to deny that there are any horrendous evils (since given her picture of God’s love and power, God ensures everyone’s life is a great good to them). That, I guess, would be good news. But that’s not Adams’ view.

I don’t have an alternative, besides the unrigorous:

4. Really bad evils.

Horrendous evil and moral development

Suppose I end up at a concentration camp for a significant amount of time. Here are some possible moral development outcomes:

1. becoming really bad (e.g., informer, kapo)
2. becoming heroically good (e.g., Viktor Frankl, Maximilian Kolbe)
3. becoming bitter
4. remaining non-bitter

Obviously there can be overlap—you can become really bad and stay non-bitter. And they're not exhaustive because you might come in bitter. But nevermind all that. The above will be a classification of the most common cases of the most notable aspects of resultant moral development. (Thus, for the person who remains non-bitter but becomes really bad, we classify them just as becoming really bad, because that's more notable than remaining non-bitter.)

Now, I think we have no reason to think that A's outnumber B's. (It would be great to have empirical data.) Moreover, the average A is less morally bad than the average B is morally good. The reason is that there is an asymmetry here: the pressures that A's and B's are under in the camp decrease the culpability of typical A's but increase the praiseworthiness of typical B's. (There will be partial exceptions, like maybe the person who becomes needlessly cruel or the person who becomes virtuous because he's St Maximilian's cellmate. But even these exceptions are not going to be complete exceptions.) Furthermore—and again data would help—I suspect that some of the A's repent of their badness afterwards (some never do, and for some there is no afterwards), while few of the B's repent of their goodness afterwards. So, if all we know about x is that he is going to be an A or a B, the expected value of x's moral development hange will be positive.

What about the C's and D's? This is, I think, the really important case, as they'll probably be a larger group than the A's and B's. Now, it is a much greater virtue to remain non-bitter through a concentration camp than it is a vice to become bitter through the concentration camp. Part of the reason is the culpability point from the previous paragraph. Making one bitter is the "natural" tendency of horrors, and it is not a great vice to fall into that. So, unless there are way more C's than D's, we have positive expected value of moral development.

Now, add the following thesis: In terms of value, a moderate amount of positive moral development trumps a very large amount of suffering. (Socrates would say—and I think he'd be right—that any amount of positive moral development trumps any amount of suffering.) If this thesis is right, even when we add the amount of suffering, we may still have positive expected value for a random individual who suffers horrors like those of a concentration camp.

The real problem of evil, I think, is not about expected values, utilities and the like, however. The real problem is deontological. Does God have the right to allow someone to suffer so much given the expected value of moral development? I think the answer is positive. Suppose I knew that by preventing a great suffering to myself I would be losing an opportunity for significant positive moral development. Would prudence permit me to refrain from preventing the suffering? I think it would. Nor would such a refraining from prevention be morally wrong. But God is closer to me than I myself am, in some relevant sense. If I would not be imprudent or immoral to permit a suffering to myself, it would likewise not be wrong of God to permit it to me.