The "Problem" of Evil in LDS Theology

[Guest]

I wanted to explore the question of theodicy a bit, and see how we can move toward a better understanding of the nature and presence of evil and suffering in the world in light of LDS theology and specifically, the "plan of salvation."

I'm going to keep my own posts here as short as possible to facilitate easier reading and digestion of the contents of the arguments, and just begin the exploration with a few observations and/or general statements of fundamental principle.

In LDS theology, the overarching problem of evil in the world is dealt with by introducing certain fundamental concepts, among them that:

1. Evil must exist for good to exist. As neither have any meaning without comparison and contrast to the other, they are a dynamic, interconnected pair, like the Yin/Yang symbol. It is the reference that each creates with respect to the other that is of the most importance, as it is the interplay of both opposites that allows us our moral and intellectual awareness of their natures.

2. The Plan of Salvation, in which we find that we had a substantial knowledge and awareness of the risks and threats to be found in mortality, including, in all likelihood, specific sufferings/challenges calibrated to and for us as individuals. This means that, for Latter day Saints, the problem of evil becomes, for the most part, our problem with evil.

This does not mean that the gospel, as presently revealed, answers all the philosophical questions one could pose as to any particular instance of evil (the Great Terror, the Holocaust, the Cambodian killing fields etc.), but it does mean that all such questions of suffering and pain, once they can be placed securely within a gospel framework, can be handled, not as a philosophical problem needing as solution, but as challenges/obstacles of mortal existence requiring the generation and deployment of the very character attributes such sufferings and challenges are intended, within the plan of salvation, to elicit and expand.

Attributes such as patience, courage, loyalty, faith, moral consistency (not using one's suffering as an excuse to abandon moral principles within relationships or other kinds of personal conduct) etc. can be, if the eternal context of suffering and contact with evil is understood, brought out and refined in this way (and, perhaps, this is the only way).

The other choice is to "curse God and die," to use a Book of Mormon phrase, but barring the more extreme forms of victimization by evil or natural disaster, the other choice is to arbitrarily interpret certain kinds of suffering as "needless" or "pointless" which, all other things being equal, can only become a going concern within the framework of a naturalistic metaphysical view of the universe, within which death is a final and absolute end to conscious existence, and hence, to meaning. From this frame of reference, all suffering could be considered "unnecessary" in the sense that, in death, all experiences and wisdom gained during a lifetime are rendered moot.

Within a plan of salvation context, no suffering of whatever kind can be either needless or pointless so long as the eternal, panoramic perspective of the mortal experience is kept in mind. So long as a sentient, self aware being understands and has a testimony of the gospel and the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and remains aware of his existence in all the contexts in which it becomes embedded within eternity - premortal, mortal, and post-mortal - present suffering, of whatever kind, will always be associated with the most important attribute that can be attached to suffering and evil, and which allows it to be negotiated successfully without retreating into apostasy or atheism - meaning. Meaning and teleology, in the sense of an underlying, ultimate, and intrinsic meaning to existence that transcends mere humanly constructed meaning, vanish within a secular humanistic, or naturalistic worldview that lops off the preexistence and post-mortal spheres of existence and strands mankind in what the gospel understands as the near infinitely short in duration middle phase.

It is precisely because the nature of our present suffering is not known with any precision relative to its place in our lives in an eternal sense that mortality requires faith, but it is also true that evil and suffering exist within an extremely narrow bandwidth of experience and conscious existence as contrasted to the eternal nature of that existence and the meaning it has for an eternal being who's conscious awareness (and intellectual reflectiveness) does not end with death and who is therefore capable and open to kaleidoscopic possibilities of meaning and application relative to whatever he suffered or underwent, at the hands of moral evil or of tragic circumstances, while in mortality.

Meaning regarding evil and suffering, in other words, within a gospel context, is not in any sense exhausted by possible mortal insights.

[_moksha]

I think of our Heavenly LDS postulations as being divided into three groups:

1. Heavenly Level - full of goodness and light. They serve your favorite Thai, Indian, French and Italian dishes in the large banquet room.

2. Earthly Proving Ground - a myriad of shades of gray between good and evil from which to choose.

3. The Pit of Chaos - where folks are forced to behave in a proscribed manner and they are extremely judgmental of one another. Let's call them the Sons and Daughters of Perdition.

[_Analytics]

It is precisely because the nature of our present suffering is not known with any precision relative to its place in our lives in an eternal sense that mortality requires faith, but it is also true that evil and suffering exist within an extremely narrow bandwidth of experience and conscious existence as contrasted to the eternal nature of that existence and the meaning it has for an eternal being who's conscious awareness (and intellectual reflectiveness) does not end with death and who is therefore capable and open to kaleidoscopic possibilities of meaning and application relative to whatever he suffered or underwent, at the hands of moral evil or of tragic circumstances, while in mortality.

Meaning regarding evil and suffering, in other words, within a gospel context, is not in any sense exhausted by possible mortal insights.

Wikipedia sums up the problem of evil as follows:

In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to explain evil if there exists a deity that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient.

For Mormonism, the simple answer is that God isn’t literally omnipotent: he is just another player in a universe which he didn’t create, which entails evil, just as it entails good.

The more interesting aspect of the discussion, though, is about the nature of good and evil. If I saw a child drowning, had the power to help but chose not to, you would rightly call me evil. This raises the question, doesn’t God see such things happening, too? Why doesn’t he help? If he could help but doesn’t, shouldn’t he rightly be called evil?

You give a fair representation of the Mormon answer to this: a child drowning is a small, barely-significant blip from an eternal perspective—from the correct perspective, God allowing the child to drown somehow serves the greater good.

The unsettling part of this, though, is what it implies about morality. If the nasty things that God allows to happen are small bumps on an eternal road and that allowing them to happen serves the greater good, why shouldn’t we humans allow nasty things to happen for exactly the same reason? If intervening in the natural world isn’t something that God has the moral obligation to do, why should we have the moral obligation to do it, then?

[_Droopy]

In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to explain evil if there exists a deity that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient.

For Mormonism, the simple answer is that God isn’t literally omnipotent: he is just another player in a universe which he didn’t create, which entails evil, just as it entails good.

I don't think LDS theology will support that analysis. God, in LDS thought, is, indeed, literally omnipotent. This does not imply that he can do anything, but it does mean that anything that can be done, he can do.

If circles could be made square, then God could square them. That this is a conceptual and ontological impossibility only means that Paradoxes such as the concept of "square circle" is not a part of the fabric of reality within which God himself is embedded. That certain things are outside God's power to do because they are outside possible reality, does not render God any less omnipotent, but only places God in a position in which he is unable to work nonsense (such as annihilating himself, casing good to be evil, decreeing that nothing exists at all but himself, or, in other words, creating contradictions, paradoxes, and state of affairs that are contrary to eternal law to which he himself is subject).

But I'll say again that God's omnipotence is not, from a LDS standpoint, the key issue here. The issue is, again the requirements and conditions of the plan of salvation, which God cannot use his omnipotence to negate or amend in the name of a desire to arbitrarily rescue humans from certain conditions attendant to that plan in its mortal phase.

The more interesting aspect of the discussion, though, is about the nature of good and evil. If I saw a child drowning, had the power to help but chose not to, you would rightly call me evil.

Yes.

This raises the question, doesn’t God see such things happening, too?

Yes.

Why doesn’t he help?

How do you know he doesn't, in a number of individual circumstances?

If he could help but doesn’t, shouldn’t he rightly be called evil?

If God can help but doesn't, because the requirements of the plan of salvation and the unique requirements and experiential needs attending each individual undergoing a mortal probation dictates that he should not help, because from his eternal perceptual standpoint (which we do not share) to help, in that instance, would be to neutralize the experiential aspects of an experience necessary for key insights and knowledge central in that person's continuing the process of eternal progression, then he cannot be considered evil.

A human would choose not to help a drowning person for any number of reason; cowardice, hatred of the person drowning, insurance money etc., and those kinds of motives must be considered as evil, but no such motives inhere in God, or need be thought to inhere in him, as sufficient reason to forbear, in various instances, deploying divine rescue in any/all areas of human suffering

You give a fair representation of the Mormon answer to this: a child drowning is a small, barely-significant blip from an eternal perspective—from the correct perspective, God allowing the child to drown somehow serves the greater good.

I would argue that, from an LDS perspective, a child drowning is a matter of cosmic significance, but that it is only the existence of the cosmic - eternal - perspective itself that allows such significance. Far from shrinking the phenomena of a drowning child to an insignificant blip, eternal perspective raises it to a matter of infinite significance by the very fact of the child being a timeless, individual intelligence embedded in an eternal ocean of being and experience. This is especially true of very small children, who have not reached the age of moral accountability. LDS doctrine teaches that these have been removed from contact with evil before Satan was able to exercise any power over them, and that hence, they are heirs of the Celestial Kingdom. Outside the gospel, within a naturalistic setting, it is, indeed, nothing more than an irrelevant blip in an uncaring, random universe.

The unsettling part of this, though, is what it implies about morality. If the nasty things that God allows to happen are small bumps on an eternal road and that allowing them to happen serves the greater good, why shouldn’t we humans allow nasty things to happen for exactly the same reason?

1. Not being God, we have neither the eternal perspective (knowing what the greater good is) nor the eternal motives and understanding of the consequences of action or inaction.

2. Sometimes, we should allow things to happen that may be unpleasant, but are required for the growth of others, no?

[_Analytics]

I don't think LDS theology will support that analysis. God, in LDS thought, is, indeed, literally omnipotent. This does not imply that he can do anything, but it does mean that anything that can be done, he can do.

This isn’t the same definition of omnipotence that Christian Fundamentalists use. For example, if I asked them if God could snap his fingers and change the universal gravitational constant, they’d say that since he’s omnipotent, yes he can. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I asked you the same thing, you’d say, “it depends upon whether or not the constant can be changed: if it can’t be changed, then God can’t change it.”

The theory of weak omnipotence vs. the theory of strong omnipotence?

Not being God, we have neither the eternal perspective (knowing what the greater good is) nor the eternal motives and understanding of the consequences of action or inaction.

Let’s go back to the drowning child. A philosopher who has embraced what you say here is sitting on the dock. A child is 30 feet away, drowning, and crying for help. The philosopher thinks to himself, “not being God, I have neither the eternal perspective nor the eternal motives to understand the consequences of action or inaction, so I don’t know whether action should be taken. But since God has the property of (weak) omnipotence, He is fully capable of helping the drowning girl. And since He is omniscient, He knows whether or not helping her will bring to pass the greater good. So I’ll just defer to God on this one, and allow Him to help as He thinks best. So barring direct revelation to the contrary, I’ll just sit on the deck and watch God’s marvelous plan play out.

In this case, you’d rightly call this straw-man philosopher evil, but God was just as capable of intervening in the situation as the man was.

I anticipate you’d object to this characterization by citing D&C 58 (men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness), but that’s the problem: how do we know whether saving this girl is a righteous cause or not? After all, we don’t have eternal perspectives, and we know that in many such cases when children are drowning in the presence of only God, in his omniscience and omnipotence, he allows them to drown.

[_ErikJohnson]

In LDS theology, the overarching problem of evil in the world is dealt with by introducing certain fundamental concepts, among them that:

1. Evil must exist for good to exist.

Hey Droopy—

This seems to imply one of two possibilities:

1) An evil entity co-exists eternally with God, possessing a degree of power apart from God.

2) Evil is resident in God’s nature or character.

Thoughts on this? Is there a third possibility I’m not seeing?

Because if there’s not, then it’s hard to see how LDS thought can contribute to an understanding of “the problem of evil” when it begins the conversation by denying His omnipotence and/or His goodness. That’s got to be a non-starter (for a Christian).

--Erik

[_Analytics]

In LDS theology, the overarching problem of evil in the world is dealt with by introducing certain fundamental concepts, among them that:

1. Evil must exist for good to exist.

Hey Droopy—

This seems to imply one of two possibilities:

1) An evil entity co-exists eternally with God, possessing a degree of power apart from God.

2) Evil is resident in God’s nature or character.

Thoughts on this? Is there a third possibility I’m not seeing?

Because if there’s not, then it’s hard to see how LDS thought can contribute to an understanding of “the problem of evil” when it begins the conversation by denying His omnipotence and/or His goodness. That’s got to be a non-starter (for a Christian).

--Erik

Excellent point. The maxim that “evil must exist for good to exist” has a superficial appeal because it brings to mind the theory of relativity (i.e. Good is good? Relative to what?). But the question remains, is this really consistent with reality? Why?

Furthermore, what does it even mean? Is there some cosmic law that “good” and “evil” have to be in equal balance—that the only way to increase the amount of good in the universe is to increase the amount of evil? If not, then good can be increased, and evil decreased? What if the amount of evil in the universe was decreased to the smallest amount of evil—something barely detectable by the most sensitive an evil-meter. Does decreasing evil to that extent impair the amount of goodness in the universe? If not, how exactly would eliminating that last particle of evil cause all good to be annihilated?

[_Valorius]

This thread is pretty deep, to me. It's hard to understand the ideas. I'd like to put in a two cents or maybe just a farthing, though, if I may.

I honestly believe I was able to enjoy the beauty of the sky before seeing an ugly sky, or an ugly anything. I saw icky things as a kid -rotten fruit, dead animals, garbage -but not as something "ugly". Just as 'what is'. I loved fruit. Don't remember having a fruit I didn't like, as a kid. I remember, 3 or 4 years old, biting into "soggy" fruit. Actually, it was 'turning', but I didn't understand things like "spoiled" and "rotten", so I just though it tasted different. It wasn't 'bad', just different, a stronger flavor. I liked the taste of food; don't remember eating anything that tasted 'bad'. I don't remember my first taste of food. What I do remember is always liking sweet tastes. I remember my first taste of Durian. I didn't need that, to know I liked sweet things. I don't need to experience murder to know I enjoy life. I didn't need my parents to hate me as a baby, before I could absorb and reflect their love.

So I am forced by experience to reject the idea that opposites are necessary in order to appreciate the positives in life.

I also have to reject the idea that there is "opposition in all things". At least until someone can satisfactorily explain the opposition to the principle or doctrine of "opposition in all things", and maybe the opposition to a cosmos in which good and evil both exist.

For me, then, good and evil are not co-existent, co-eternal, nor co-dependent.

[_Droopy]

I don't think LDS theology will support that analysis. God, in LDS thought, is, indeed, literally omnipotent. This does not imply that he can do anything, but it does mean that anything that can be done, he can do.

This isn’t the same definition of omnipotence that Christian Fundamentalists use. For example, if I asked them if God could snap his fingers and change the universal gravitational constant, they’d say that since he’s omnipotent, yes he can. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I asked you the same thing, you’d say, “it depends upon whether or not the constant can be changed: if it can’t be changed, then God can’t change it.”

Well, perhaps, but altering the gravitational constant to something other than what it is rather trivial (and hardly implausible, as there is no reason to think that it is the only gravitational setting possible) compared to the creation of paradoxes and contradictions that nonetheless exist anyway, or of altering reality in ways that refute the notion of "reality" (such as creating the cosmos in an instant out of "nothing." etc.)

The theory of weak omnipotence vs. the theory of strong omnipotence?

Well, I'm not sure that would suffice. At a minimum, though, LDS doctrine claims that, while God cannot do anything, he can do all things (within the constraints of what is possible across all possible or existing worlds).

Not being God, we have neither the eternal perspective (knowing what the greater good is) nor the eternal motives and understanding of the consequences of action or inaction.

Let’s go back to the drowning child. A philosopher who has embraced what you say here is sitting on the dock. A child is 30 feet away, drowning, and crying for help. The philosopher thinks to himself, “not being God, I have neither the eternal perspective nor the eternal motives to understand the consequences of action or inaction, so I don’t know whether action should be taken. But since God has the property of (weak) omnipotence, He is fully capable of helping the drowning girl. And since He is omniscient, He knows whether or not helping her will bring to pass the greater good. So I’ll just defer to God on this one, and allow Him to help as He thinks best. So barring direct revelation to the contrary, I’ll just sit on the deck and watch God’s marvelous plan play out.

In this case, you’d rightly call this straw-man philosopher evil, but God was just as capable of intervening in the situation as the man was.

But it is only God's omniscience, and his panoramic view of the life of an individual and the mortal sphere as a whole that allows him a knowledge of the end from the beginning and of the ultimate consequences of action or inaction. His choice is from that perceptual reference. Ours is not. Nowhere is it claimed that God's omniscience is ever delegated to us. Again, it is the requirements of the plan of salvation, not God's omniscience as an isolated and absolute characteristic that is at the crux of the matter.

This means that God doesn't intervene in many such cases primarily because a phenomena such as a drowning child is a call for us to exercise and develop certain attributes and capacities - such as compassion, love, self sacrifice, courage at the risk of one's own welfare etc. in the service of another, not a dilemma in which we try to decide whether to help or re-delegate that responsibility back to God while speculating - quite without his omniscience - about just what the consequences may or may not be.

I don't think using God's omniscience and our lack of it as an excuse to recuse ourselves from service to one another in time of need is a workable solution to this philosophical problem, which is what is required of us relative to each other respecting the plan, and not what God knows that we do not, per se.

The plan of salvation, in other words, is not for God, but primarily for us, and its conditions and the kings of phenomena, such as drowning children, that can occur in a moral sphere such as this one, given all the possibilities of human behavior and human error, are an inherent aspect of that sphere.

Most of the things one might say God "allows," in other words, are that which the very fundamental nature of the mortal sphere of existence as a set of conditions, allows. Drowning, like swimming, or like eating or choking on a piece of stake, are all inherent features of a mortal or "Telestial" world.

Drowning is one among countless possible experiences present in a complex, biological world in which organic beings like ourselves are faced with numerous and distinctive limitations and risks.

I anticipate you’d object to this characterization by citing D&C 58 (men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness), but that’s the problem: how do we know whether saving this girl is a righteous cause or not? After all, we don’t have eternal perspectives, and we know that in many such cases when children are drowning in the presence of only God, in his omniscience and omnipotence, he allows them to drown.

I'm not sure that the question is whether it is "righteous" or not, but whether, from an eternal perspective, leaving this earth at that time, by whatever means, is more or less appropriate for that person at that time. At the very least, someone in need of help in our presence, when we have the ability to at least attempt rescue, is a call to risk and sacrifice from us to the other. Whether or not that rescue is or is not successful may itself be a part of God's plan and form an integral aspect of lessons he desires both we and the person we help should learn as a part of mortality.

[_Droopy]

In LDS theology, the overarching problem of evil in the world is dealt with by introducing certain fundamental concepts, among them that:

1. Evil must exist for good to exist.

Hey Droopy—

This seems to imply one of two possibilities:

1) An evil entity co-exists eternally with God, possessing a degree of power apart from God.

2) Evil is resident in God’s nature or character.

Thoughts on this? Is there a third possibility I’m not seeing?

Because if there’s not, then it’s hard to see how LDS thought can contribute to an understanding of “the problem of evil” when it begins the conversation by denying His omnipotence and/or His goodness. That’s got to be a non-starter (for a Christian).

--Erik

The point is that evil as a concept; as the inversion of good, exists coeternally with good, and that without the comparison and contrast of each with the other, the other cannot be conceptualized at all.

That both good and evil can only be manifest through sentient awareness capable of comprehension of the relative concepts and of being subject to motives and desires gorunded in one or the other, is, I think, correct, but in LDS thought, good and evil do not inhere in an ultimate sense in either a specific God or a specific coextensive evil entity, but is a necessary and intrinsic feature of consciousness itself, which is a feature of the eternal, uncreated intelligence that forms the basis of the preexistent spirit personages we become as we are born to Heavenly parents in the prexistent realm.

Once of sufficient awareness, such an "intelligence" (the eternal intelligence fused with a spirit body to form a self aware, individuated person) becomes aware of good and evil as eternal, coexistent possibilities, potential, and forms of expression.

Without such intelligence and perception capable of such a level of awareness, perhaps one could say that good and evil do not exist. No doubt, if the highest form of life in the universe was at the level of canine or feline intelligence, the question would never arise.