Summary of J. L. Mackie’s “Evil and Omnipotence”

First of all, let me provide the context of Mackie’s take on evil so we will be able to follow the trajectory of his arguments and fully make sense of the main purpose of the paper.

It must be noted that the question about the existence of God remains to be one of the recurring topics in philosophical discussions and debates. And in the debate about the existence of God, there are always two opposing camps. On the one hand, there are those who argue for the existence of God, and on the other hand, there are those who argue that God does not exist. But as we can see, Mackie argues that those who argue for the existence of God missed to provide enough evidence to convince everyone that God really exists. In fact, as Mackie argues, all the arguments for God’s existence that philosophers in the past had made were faulty. However, Mackie was quick to note that this position should not be used as a reason for someone not to believe in God. Again, it’s just that for Mackie, this argument is irrational. And for Mackie, those who argue for the non-existence of God have not been successful in persuading the believers no matter how they tried. And this is where Mackie comes in.

In his seminal essay titled “Evil and Omnipotence”, Mackie attempts to prove that the belief in a good God is irrational. And Mackie uses the existence of evil as a proof to it. This is because the existence of evil, as a direct opposite of good, will discount the existence of a good God.

As we can see, Mackie’s main argument is that if an all-good God exists, then why the existence of so much evil in the world? Again, Mackie believes that the existence of evil is a direct contradiction of God being absolutely good. As Mackie writes:

In its simplest form the problem is this: God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the theologian, it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three.

Mackie adds:

However, the contradiction does not arise immediately; to show it we need some additional premises, or perhaps some quasi-logical rules connecting the terms ‘good’, ‘evil’, and ‘omnipotent’. These additional principles are that good is opposed to evil, in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can, and that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. From these it follows that a good omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely, and then the propositions that a good omnipotent thing exists, and that evil exists, are incompatible.

Mackie then claims that the propositions: “God is omnipotent”, “God is wholly good”, and “Evil exists” cannot be all true. In fact, Mackie added two more principles which make the three propositions logically contradictory, namely:

1. If something is wholly good, it always eliminates as much evil as it can.
2. If something is omnipotent, it can do anything.

And Mackie was convinced that these two principles, which are clear definitions of the concept of good/evil and omnipotence, appear to be reasonable and that most believers would agree with them.

Now, Mackie shows that the three propositions and the two added principles do imply a contradiction, and that at least one of them must be false. Mackie then engages the responses to this problem, and in doing so, he distinguishes two major types of solutions, namely, adequate solutions and fallacious solutions.

To the first, Mackie agrees that the problem for the theist can be solved by giving up one of the three propositions, that is, deny that God is “omnipotent” or good, or deny that there is “evil” in the world. As Mackie writes:

Now once the problem is fully stated it is clear that it can be solved, in the sense that the problem will not arise if one gives up at least one of the propositions that constitute it. If you are prepared to say that God is not wholly good, or not quite omnipotent, or that evil does not exist, or that good is not opposed to the kind of evil that exists, or that there are limits to what an omnipotent thing can do, then the problem of evil will not arise for you.

However, Mackie thinks that most believers will be unwilling to take this approach. For doing so leaves them with a conception of a God that isn’t worthy of worship, and therefore not religiously significant. Hence, although these solutions are “adequate“, for Mackei, they are not really successful.

To the second, Mackie then proceeds with the examination of the so-called solutions to this problem which purport to remove the contradiction without abandoning any of its constituent propositions. In other words, for Mackie, these solutions remain to be unsuccessful as they are in themselves fallacious. Let me now briefly engage each solution.

The first solution reads:

“Good cannot exist without evil.” Or ” Evil is necessary as a counterpart to good.”

​The idea here is that God could not have made a world which had any good without allowing some evil, since it is impossible for goodness to exist without evil. But Mackie argues that this argument is indeed a “limitation” on God’s omnipotence. Mackie says that this

… sets a limit to what God can do, saying that God cannot create good without simultaneously creating evil, and this means either that God is not omnipotent or that there are some limits to what an omnipotent thing can do.

Now, Mackie writes:

It may be replied that these limits are always presupposed, that omnipotence has never meant the power to do what is logically impossible, and on the present view the existence of good without evil would be a logical impossibility.

In other words, what Mackie tries to say here is that the believers may resort to the argument that omnipotence does not extend to doing logically impossible things. As St. Thomas Aquinas argues, “God can do all things that are possible”.

In response to this, Mackie uses the analogy of size. He asks: “Does (relative) greatness require (relative) smallness?”

Mackie then concludes that good things are only relatively good, even that God is only relatively good. Hence, it would appear that God is trying to maximize relative goodness. But if one thinks of God trying to make everything in the universe relatively bigger, one realizes that this does not make much sense. In fact, Mackie argues that this does not work if one imagines something to be absolutely good or big. This is because, as Mackie would have us believe, an absolutely big thing like the universe does not require smaller things to exist in order for it to be big. The same would be true of an absolutely good thing.

Indeed, for Mackie, the argument that goodness requires evil as a counterpart does not hold water.

The second solution reads:

“Evil is necessary as a means to good.”

The basic idea here is that God uses evil to bring about goodness. In other words, evil is a means to an end. The classic example is the argument that “suffering”, such as becoming broke or losing a loved one, is necessary for personal development.

For Mackie, this argument implies a restriction on God’s omnipotence. If it is a law of cause-and-effect that evil has to cause goodness, then, for Mackie, omnipotence ought to be able to break this law. Most believers think God created the laws of causality in the first place and miracles are supposed to show God breaking causal laws. Mackie writes:

In its simple form this has little plausibility as a solution of the problem of evil, since it obviously implies a severe restriction of God’s power. It would be a causal law that you cannot have a certain end without a certain means, so that if God has to introduce evil as a means to good, he must be subject to at least some causal laws.

The third solution reads:

“The universe is better with some evil in it than it could be if there were no evil.”

The basic idea here is that certain kinds of evil are necessary for certain kinds of good. Mackie uses the analogy of pain and disease to drive his point. Indeed, without disease and pain, it would be impossible to have medical advances and feelings of sympathy for the sick. Mackie mentions the analogy used by Augustine of Hippo of an artist who includes ugly features in his work, such as discordant notes and dark colors, for an overall pleasing effect.

Mackie then makes an important distinction between first and second-order goods and evils: 

…evil (1) is pain and good (1) is happiness, but good (2) involves compassion and courage which are only possible in a world with evil (1) in it.

Mackie then explains the “fatal objection” to this:

…there must also be evil (2), such as cruelty. If the theist argues that there is good (3), which is increasing the amount of good (2) in the world, then there is also evil (3), which is increasing the amount of evil (2). This leads to an infinite regress.

And so, again, solution number 3 does not hold water.

The fourth solution reads:

“Evil is due to human freewill.”

The idea here is that many kinds of evil are not the result of God’s actions, but of the free actions of human beings.

Mackie asks how can this count as a solution to the problem of evil, given that God created the free willed creatures? The theist’s reply has to be something like this:

1. Free will is a great good; creatures that lack freewill are automata and a world of automata would be worse than a world with evil in it.
2. It is impossible, even for God, to create a being which has free will and to ensure that it never brings about evil.

It is better that God made us with freewill and not as robots or automata who are kind or brave in a machine-like way. An all-powerful, good God would make a world in which human beings have freewill and can choose kindness over cruelty. Mackie’s main objection is to question why God didn’t create us so that we always choose good over evil of our own freewill. Why couldn’t we have been created morally stronger beings? It’s possible to be free willed and yet always choose good actions instead of evil ones. Mackie writes:

God was not, then, faced with a choice between making innocent automata and making beings who, in acting freely, would sometimes go wrong: there was open to him the obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely but always go right. Clearly, his failure to avail himself of this possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly good.

As we can see, when theists say that making wrong choices is necessary for freedom, Mackie accuses them of confusing freewill with randomness. Mackie thinks freewill involves acting in accord with our character. We only blame a person if we think their actions come from a bad character. If free actions were random, we would have no reason to condemn people. But if freewill is based on character, it does not solve the problem of evil because God creates us with our characters, so he is ultimately responsible for our choices.

Mackie concludes that the “Freewill Defence” only works if you assume God is not omnipotent. He explains the Paradox of Omnipotence with the idea of God creating something he can’t control, that is, first, if God can’t create truly free creatures, there is a limit to his power, and second, if God can create truly free creatures, there is something he can’t control and therefore a limit to his power. Either way, omnipotence is impossible.

Conclusion

It must be noted that Mackie did not offer any solution to the problem of evil and omnipotence. What Mackie did is simply examine the solutions theists offered to the problem of evil and omnipotence. Let me end this lecture by reading Mackie’s conclusion:

“Of the proposed solutions of the problem of evil which we have examined, none has stood up to criticism. There may be other solutions which require examination, but this study strongly suggests that there is no valid solution of the problem which does not modify at least one of the constituent propositions in a way which would seriously affect the essential core of the theistic position. Quite apart from the problem of evil, the paradox of omnipotence has shown that God’s omnipotence must in any case be restricted in one way or another, that unqualified omnipotence cannot be ascribed to any being that continues through time. And if God and his actions are not in time, can omnipotence, or power of any sort, be meaningfully ascribed to him?”