The Epicurean Paradox

I recently pointed out that it’s not my job as an atheist to disprove the existence of gods. While this is true, it is a fun mental exercise. My favorite is the Epicurean Paradox. First, let’s examine the claim of a god’s existence. Most theologies attribute God with three traits. He is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and omnibenevolent (all loving). Some schools of thought add or remove from these three, but these are generally agreed upon by monotheists.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

– Epicurus

This has always seemed like a great argument to me. In order to be considered “god”, you must have those three traits. If evil exists, then a god with these traits cannot exist. We know evil exists. We can see it. It’s on the news every day. Therefore, a god with these traits does not exist.

To put it another way, we know that evil exists. If a god exists also, then why doesn’t he stop evil? If he does not have the power to stop it, he’s not all powerful, and therefore not God. If he does have the power, but doesn’t know about evil, then he is not all knowing, and therefore not God. If he has the power, and knows about evil, but chooses not to stop it, then he’s not all loving, and therefore not God.

The obvious rebuttal is the free will argument. This posits, that God (as the ultimate father figure) is trying to teach us via learning from mistakes and consequences and evil is a necessary punishment. Ok. I’ll bite. First let’s dismiss the “free will” part. In the Bible, Yahweh deliberately overrides someone’s free will specifically to punish people. You see, in Exodus 9:12 “And the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he hearkened not unto them, as the Lord had spoken to Moses.” After the 6th plague, the Pharaoh WANTED to release Moses and the other Hebrew slaves, but GOD hardened the Pharaoh’s heart. God ignored the Pharaoh’s free will, so he could continue with the rest of the plagues. So clearly, the God of the Bible does not care about free will.

Next, let’s look at the word “evil”. Evil is defined in many ways, but usually is based on the INTENT, not the OUTCOME. So when Charles Manson convinced his followers to kill people, his INTENT was evil. Now first, you might say, that I’m bolstering the theist’s argument. If God is doing it out of love, to help us grow, then the intent is positive. The problem here, is that (according to Godwin’s Law) I must point out that Hitler’s intent was good also. He just wanted to help his people.

Let’s ignore that for the moment. If God’s intent is good, and intent decides if something is good or evil, then what God allows to happen is not evil. So we’re back to square one. From whence cometh evil? Another popular argument states that God gave the Devil domain of the Earth. Ok. Let’s see how this plays out. God creates the universe and all beings in it. God is all knowing so he knows that Lucifer will turn against him. He knows that Satan will corrupt Eve who (having breasts) will corrupt Adam by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, which I think, was the first library. He also knows that generations later, evil will so permeate the Earth, that the only solution is GENOCIDE. Remind me which one is evil again?

From an outside perspective, it looks like the Devil wanted to teach mankind new things, and God is a mass murderer. It still doesn’t answer the question. It just makes it look like God gave up fighting evil and then when he got too angry about it, went on a killing spree. Couldn’t he just have… not made Lucifer? Wouldn’t that have solved all the problems? If Lucifer didn’t cause evil, then the whole previous argument was a waste, because the point was that the Devil had domain of the Earth, thus it was full of evil. It get’s better. After the flood, evil returns. It gets so bad, that the only solution God can think of (since he promised not to use flooding again) was to KILL HIS ONLY CHILD. And now we don’t have evil.

Oh. Wait. We do. So that was also useless. So let’s get this straight. God creates an evil being and can’t stop him, drowns evil people, and can’t stop evil from returning, murders his own son (who is also him?) and evil returns again. Clearly, the god of the Bible is not all knowing. He’s less competent that Inspector Clouseau.

So again, if there is a god, why is there evil? Does he WANT us to suffer? Does he not care? Then he’s not all loving. We are supposed to believe that he can drown the entire world, control the Pharaoh’s heart, create a garden of perfection, but still hasn’t figured out how to stop evil? He must not all powerful. And clearly, He has no fucking clue what he’s doing, so he’s not all knowing.

There. I just disproved god.