Problem of Evil - the Nuclear Option

This is a topic that I addressed some time ago.  The Problem of Evil, or POE, is basically that the ubiquity of evil in our world is incompatible with a God who has the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-benevolence.  The typical response from theists is that God has some good reason for allowing evil, and even that evil is necessary to fulfill God's plan.  People are evil by nature, and they must be granted free will so that they can rise above it and earn their place in heaven.  Bad things happen to teach us valuable lessons so that we will be worthy to abide with God, etc.  There are a number of such explanations, and they are called theodicies.

The Problem of Evil is a serious issue for theists.  It deserves a solid response.  And yet, I have never heard any satisfactory answer.  They are always just-so stories that fall apart when you probe with any depth.  You can ask questions like why did countless trillions of animals have to suffer before the first human lived on earth?  Or why can't our souls be tested in a spiritual realm without harming innocent creatures in the physical world?  Or why doesn't God just make the kind of people he wants to spend eternity with in the first place?  Why all the drama?  Why all the condemned souls?  There are no theodicies that satisfactorily answer these questions.  They are at best hand-waving lame excuses for something that just doesn't make logical sense.

And one of the lamest answers to the POE I have heard is what I call the nuclear option that theists fall back on when all their other arguments don't hit the mark.  The nuclear option is the notion that atheists can't legitimately make an argument like the POE because they don't have a basis for stating that evil exists in the first place.  According to them, evil can only exist if there is a God as the ground of morality and goodness that establishes a reference by which evil can be judged.  Jeffery Lowder has addressed this claim in various ways, referring to analogous dichotomies like pain and pleasure that can be cited by an atheist without making any reference to God or evil.  But that apparently isn't good enough to avoid the nuclear option.  As Joe Hinman puts it:

The criticism I would level against Jeff at this point is just referring to the list does not establish a basis for the concept of "evil.." That does not answer the argument that without God there is no basis for evil,. All of those aspects of the problem assume there is a concept of evil they don't predicate it, They don't establish a basis for the concept apart from God. With no basis for evil that list becomes meaningless. - Hinman

No basis for the concept of evil?  Evil can't exist without God, so atheists have no argument?  The word 'evil' is defined as profoundly immoral and wicked.  OK, so the concept of morality is involved in the concept of evil.  The theist is arguing that since atheists have no ground for morality, they can make no claims about the existence of evil.  But this objection fails on several different levels.

First, the existence of evil (if defined in a theistic manner - as a privation of God's morality, for example) is only part of the problem.  The POE can be stated without using the word 'evil', and without losing any significant meaning or effectiveness.  Even if the atheist concedes that he can claim no evil according to the theists' concept of it, he will not concede that there is no gratuitous suffering in the world.  He will point out other objective facts that are inconsistent with the supposed attributes of God.  These facts have little or nothing to do with one's understanding of morality.  And this is one of the things Lowder was pointing out.  It really doesn't matter if you call it the "Problem of Evil" or the "Problem of Suffering", or something else.  The argument is no less sound.  It's still a problem for the theist, and this inane objection doesn't make it go away.

Second, atheists do have a sense of morality that is just as real as that of theists.  At least as far as any intelligent theist is concerned, the disagreement isn't really about whether atheists have a concept morality, but rather what the source of that morality is.  The fact is that atheists have concepts of morality and of evil, that in a practical sense are quite similar to the concepts that theists have, even if they are not metaphysically the same.  If it's the grounding of morality that the theist is concerned about, let's think about that.  In the naturalist's view, morality stems from evolution and from cultural and social norms.  From an evolutionary perspective, morality has its grounding in the need for cooperative behavior.  From a social perspective, it is grounded in the accepted standards of behavior established by society.  And an understanding of evil follows from that.  From the theistic perspective, morality is grounded in God.  But societal standards actually exist, and God is imaginary.  So whose grounding for morality is based in reality, and whose is imaginary?  In this respect, I think it is up to theists to defend their own concepts of morality and evil, and not just arrogantly dismiss the atheists' concepts of these things.  Their objection that the atheist morality has no grounding is pure hogwash in light of the fact that the grounding for their own morality is imaginary.

And lastly, we come to the biggest reason that this nuclear option is utterly lame and meaningless.  The POE is an argument against what theists believe.  It isn't about what atheists believe.  It isn't about naturalism, or the atheist conception of evil (or the possible lack of any such conception).  It's an argument about the coherency of theistic beliefs.  Theists believe in God, and they believe God has these omni-attributes.  And theists also believe that evil exists in the world.  (After all, that's what all their theodicies are about.  If they didn't believe that evil exists, there would be no theodicies.)  But those beliefs are logically incoherent.  That's what the POE argues.  It is illogical to accept all those beliefs at the same time.  It's their belief that is a problem.  So to try to dismiss the argument on the basis of what atheists believe or don't believe is to completely side-step the argument.  It misses the point altogether.  It' like sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "La la la la la" to drown out the words you don't want to hear.  It doesn't address the argument at all.  And frankly, it's pretty childish.

But the nuclear option is a last resort for theists who have no good answer for the Problem of Evil.  Deep down, they are well aware that they have no good answer.  Deep down, they know it is a serious intellectual problem for Christian theism.  It's a problem they haven't been able to address with any effective intellectual argument.  Far be it from them to just be honest and admit the truth.