The problem of evil in philosophy and theology is known to be notoriously difficult to be answered satisfactorily. I have learned the solutions to this problem of all the notable Western philosophers and almost all the notable Muslim philosophers, and I am at one with the commonly accepted opinion that all of the solutions so far given to this problem are far from being satisfactory. Many many people lose their belief or do not believe in God because of this problem. Having been thinking about this problem for a while, along with reading and discussing with people here and there, I now dare to write my solution, or just the central part of the solution, which I think the most satisfactory of all the solutions I have seen so far. My solution draws on the solutions of many scholars and still open to development. And it is most close to the views of the Muslim Mu'tazilite scholars.
First let me put down the problem in brief:
What is the reason for evil in the world? If God created the world, why did He let evil in His magnificent creation? To be omnipotent, He must be able to put an end to evil in the world but obviously He does not. If He wants evil to exist, how can we explain that He is a loving and merciful God? If God had to create the universe in the beginning necessarily with evil since evil is in the nature of things, then doesn't that mean that evil is ontologically prior to God or on a par with God, such that God cannot do but to create evil so as to set the world scene for us as an exam, to see who passes the exam and who fails it? Even if this is the case, which means that evil is on a par with God ontologically, cannot God prevent some of the evil that we see in the world because there seems to be so much evil, so much pain and tears, than is necessary? Further, if the moral evil is absolutely necessary, then why so much natural evil? (Moral evil: the evil done by consciously choosing human beings. Natural evil: the evil caused by natural phenomena such as earthquakes.) To achieve His project whatever, is it really necessary for God to let a little girl suffer all the horrors of a civil war? If He really loves us as His most precious creatures, why so much suffering in the world? Just pause to imagine what happened inside Nazi camps or check a few graphic images on the internet showing the mutilated or burned Syrian children trapped in the ongoing civil war.
Here is my humble solution to the problem:
God is just, omnipotent, and loving. Because of His justice, he could not have created human beings without asking them before their being created in flesh on earth whether they want to be created and put to test in the world. Therefore He must have created only those who consciously preferred to be created and be put to test in the world. Hence those who preferred to be created must have accepted wittingly the sufferings and blessings they will encounter on earth. They must have known only the range of the suffering and blessing they might encounter on earth and they could not have known the exact situation in which they would be created; they must have been behind a veil of ignorance, so to speak, because no one could have wanted to be born into a horrendous civil war or a Nazi genocide. So there must have been a deal, a pre-creation covenant, between God and humans, and humans must have forgotten this covenant when they were born. This is all just. Thus God is absolutely just.
God is omnipotent. Thus He could have prevented evil in the world. But the world as a moral scene for humans' exam must have been better conditioned as including evil and those who will suffer have already preferred to be created, as explained above. Therefore evil serves an end on earth: it differentiates the good from the bad, the courageous from the coward and so on. So, why not create evil if it serves an end? When something is useful, when it serves an end, it is better that it exists than it does not. So it is better that evil exists than it does not. There is nothing here contrary to the omnipotence and justice of God.
God is loving; He loves the good ones among His conscious creatures, and the existence of evil does not contradict that, because evil serves an end and those who preferred to be created set foot on earth with the full knowledge of the range of suffering and blessing on earth. And hence the existence of evil does not contradict with the fact that God is loving. Further, those who pass the moral test in the world successfully and earn the paradise will rejoice in the hereafter and will come to the total realization of God's justice and love for them, and then they will be happy with their pre-creation choice to be created. So, do not assess God's love for human beings while the story is proceeding;
Those who pass the exam successfully will thank God for His love for them at the end of the story. Try to see the ultimate judgment of humans, their judgment in the hereafter, regarding the love of God towards them.
All right. Evil serves an end and hence deserves to be created. But why so much? Wouldn't the world have been better off at least without natural evil, that is, the evil caused by natural events such as earthquakes? For the world to be better conditioned or created, do we really have to see disabled children around? Our kids one day may be born with a disability. Is this really necessary for the world to be better conditioned? This seems to be one of the hardest parts of this complicated problem of evil. I would say that natural evil not only serves a moral end in the way the moral evil does, it also serves an aesthetic end. If everybody is handsome and well-built, how to know the value of a handsome face and well-built body? Further, it doesn't actually matter, when the larger picture considered, whether one is disabled by an earthquake or not. Every one of us has her own exam on earth and what a particular individual ought to do is to do her best in the particular circumstances in which she has found herself. Rewards in the hereafter (and many natural rewards in the world too) will be awarded depending on the exertion of each individual. So, not being born as the child of a US president is no less a natural evil than being born with a disability, when considered from this perspective. God will judge everyone depending on the extent to which her capability reaches. Further, God will compensate in the hereafter to the sufferers all the suffering afflicted to them by natural phenomena.
