"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature - that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance - and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth?"
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov

Alyosha, the person being asked this question, softly answers “No,” and who among us would be willing to offer the contrary as our response? The "argument from evil" is generally considered one of the most powerful arguments against the existence of (or at least belief in, depending upon the formulation) the traditional sort of God which is central to the classical, philosophical theism (and, hence, the sort of God central to most monotheistic religions today).

Every formulation of the “argument from evil” basically makes the case that the existence of evil in the world is incompatible with the existence of the god in question. Therefore this god can’t exist, probably doesn’t exist, or it is at least reasonable to disbelieve in this god.

Responses and rebuttals to the “argument from evil” almost always postulate some “greater good” that is achieved through the presence of evil in the world. Perhaps the presence of evil is required in order for us to have “free will” or perhaps evil is necessary in order for us to develop positive qualities like sympathy and charity. Whatever this “good” may be, apologists argue that because this good is so important, the existence of the evil required to achieve it does not negate the existence of their god.

Such defenses often seem rather cold-hearted because we are, after all, talking about the death and suffering of real human beings and not simply abstract concepts. The above passage from Dostoyevsky‘s book Brothers Karamazov puts this into sharp relief by taking our attention away from the concept of “evil” and focusing it instead upon the experiences of a single innocent creature, for example a tiny baby who is suffering.

What Dostoyevsky describes is a relatively simple trade-off: happiness and peace for all of humanity (eventually) in exchange for the slow torture and death of a single innocent baby. Is this a fair trade? That hardly seems likely. The gain is unambiguously great and wonderful — it’s not something that anyone would turn down lightly. The cost, however, is tremendous. Imagine if you were required to be the one who inflicts the torture and suffering on the infant. Would you do it? Could you do it?

If the cost here is not worth the gain, how can one argue that the gains alleged in various theodicies are worth the monumental suffering experienced by so many human beings over the millennia? If happiness, peace, and rest for all of humanity is not worth the slow torture and death of a single infant, how can “free will” or “charity” be worth the slow torture and death of countless millions throughout human history?

I am sure that there will always be some who insist that this is a fair and reasonable trade, that the development of positive virtues like the ability to experience “sympathy” is so important that all this incredible suffering is quite a reasonable price to pay. I’m not sure, however, that such people really have developed this virtue and really are able to experience something like “sympathy” after all. It’s not much of a trade when the supposed gains aren’t being experienced.

More Weekly Quotes: commentary and analysis each week on a different quotation dealing with philosophy, religion, and more.