HAPI Scholars

Why does an all-loving God allow evil and suffering? In the philosophy of religion, this paradox is known as the Problem of Evil. It frequently serves as the primary justification for skepticism regarding the existence of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic deity.

Russell explains:

“The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both omnibenevolent (all-loving) and omnipotent (all-powerful). Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference.

If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing.

This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sa**sm; but in any case it is a very poor argument. I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children's ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy in himself all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.”

— Bertrand Russell, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Background: The Problem of Evil

In the philosophy of religion the Problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil with that of a deity who is, in either absolute or relative terms, omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (all-loving). The existence of evil seems to be incompatible with such a God. The Problem of evil is generally formulated in two forms: the Logical problem of evil and the Evidential problem of evil. The logical form of the argument attempts to illustrates the logical impossibility in the coexistence of God and evil, while the evidential form attempts to illustrate that given the evil in the world, it is improbable that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God. It is then generally concluded that a deity with these attributes does not exist.

Logical problem of evil presented:

• P1. If an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient god exists, then evil does not.

• P2. There is evil in the world.

• C1. Therefore, an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient god DOES NOT EXIST.

Evidential problem of evil presented:

• P1. There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.

• P2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.

• C3. (Therefore) There DOES NOT EXIST an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good god.

A third from of the Problem of evil, The Experiential problem of evil, is the difficulty in believing in a concept of a loving God when confronted by evil and suffering in the real world, such as from epidemics, wars, murder, and natural disasters where innocent people become victims. The problem of evil has been extended to non-human life forms, to include animal suffering from natural evils, such as predation and disease, and human cruelty against them.

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Image: A Jewish child dying alone in the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto as other children pass by during World War II. It is not known if the dying child or any of the children in this particular photograph survived the war, but it is highly unlikely. The Warsaw ghetto was the largest of the N**i ghettos during the Holocaust. At its height, as many as 460,000 Jews were imprisoned there in an area of 3.4 km² (1.3 sq mi), with an average of 9.2 persons per room, barely subsisting on meager food rations. The total death toll among the ghetto prisoners is estimated to be at least 300,000 killed, combined with 92,000 victims of starvation and related diseases, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the casualties of the final destruction of the ghetto. The photograph was taken on 19 September 1941 by Heinrich Joest, a Wehrmacht sergeant. Joest's original caption reads: “On a sidewalk in a side street, I saw this tiny child who could no longer pull himself upright. The other children didn’t stop. There were too many children like this one.”

“When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.”

— Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Christian (1927)

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Background: Why I Am Not a Christian (1927) by Bertrand Russell

For most of his adult life, Bertrand Russell viewed religion as largely founded on superstition, with its detrimental consequences far outweighing any positive impact. He argued that religion and the religious perspective impede the advancement of knowledge, promote fear and dependency, and have historically caused numerous wars, oppression, and misery on a global scale, all of which continue to this day. Russell concluded that, across the wide spectrum of human cultures and civilizations, religion justifies numerous immoral actions and customs and serves as a social control mechanism for the wealthy and powerful. Moreover, he believed that most individuals' adherence to religious beliefs is grounded in emotional factors, particularly the fear of death, rather than reason or empirical evidence.

“I do not think that the real reason why most people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds.”

— Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

Bertrand Russell helped open the door to the demystification of religion, speaking and writing in plain language at a time when the public had been told for centuries that serious discussions about the Abrahamic Christian God required a detailed knowledge of Latin, Church history and theology. Russell believed none of this:

“Those who say that God is beyond the human mind profess to know a great deal about God. They do not really mean God is beyond comprehension, only partly beyond comprehension. And generally they mean that He is beyond the comprehension of your mind and not beyond the comprehension of theirs.”

— Bertrand Russell, The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, paper 35, volume 10

Not only was Russell was critical of the particular Christian deity, but in all religious and dogmatic belief. Russell continues:

“I think all the great religions of the world-Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism-all untrue and harmful. It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they disagree, not more than one of them can be true. With very few exceptions, the religion which a man accepts is that of the community in which he lives, which makes it obvious that the influence of environment is what has led him to accept the religion in question.”

— Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (1957), Preface. xxii

Image: Cover of the 2025 reprint of Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell. It remains one of the most influential manifestos for secular humanism and rationalism.

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