Problem of Evil

The paradox of evil is an argument, raised by atheists, that tries to disprove the existence of Allah, the Most Merciful, through the fact that our world appears to contain states of affairs that are bad, undesirable, and should have been prevented by any being that could have done so. The argument supposes that the existence of pure evil is contradictory and incompatible with the omnibenevolent nature and merciful attribute of Allah (in Islamic theology), thus, since those who raise this question find it difficult to reconcile the existence of evil with Allah's attribute of mercy, many people simply come to the conclusion that He doesn't exist, and so this paradox is roughly the major cause for atheism throughout history.

Islam has a clear answer to this paradox; evil exists because we're under a religious assignment. We are here to obey Allah and follow his commandments, so that we pass the test and go to Paradise, a place where all evil is finally put to an end:

The existence of evil, trials and calamities is in itself the greatest evidence of the validity of the issue of religion and the error of atheism. If we were the children of the material world we would not comprehend neither good nor evil. If the entire universe were meaningless, we wouldn't perceive at all that it's meaningless, because according to atheistic views on the world, we follow strict material imperatives, and the laws of nature apply to us, and in this context we will not comprehend the essence of evil nor the meaning of evil.

So, do the "most sophisticated animals" perceive the paradox of evil? In fact, understanding evil means that we indeed aren't children of this materialistic world, and that we derive our understanding of the existence of evil from a premise other than the Darwinian and earthly materialistic model of existence. Instead, we belong to a divine premise, and this is the only explanation why we comprehend evil. As long as we are charged with religious assignment, it's natural that there are trials and affliction, and it's natural for us to perceive the meaning of evil.

Evil, pain, and the ability to commit disobedience and immorality is the natural requirement and self-evidence outcome of free will and divine assignment. The existence of evil, affliction, calamities, and desires disclose the best of a good person and the worst of a corrupt person.

It's astonishing that atheists deny the existence of the Creator because there is evil; they use the following analysis:

1. If the father is absolutely benevolent and likes good for his son, then why did he allow him to be given a painful injection against viruses?
2. Does the son suffer pain as a result of the injection?
3. Then, a contradiction exists. Ergo! The father doesn't exist.

Is this a logical analysis? No. Moreover, it's natural that we do not understand all the subtleties of divine wisdom in good and evil. What is even more astonishing about the issue of evil is that if there were no evil in the world, you would not have left the place where you were born, as no civilization would have existed, nor cities, factories, or homes would be built, nor would people need work, nor would people think of resisting a disease, solving a problem, or even inventing an idea to bring about convenience, nor would a person need to move from his place of birth in the first place. For there is no evil, no trouble, no affliction, no fatigue, and no problems for which we should look for solutions!

So why toil, stay up late, think, contemplate and work? Evil is an imperative necessity in this world. Many people go through affliction and evil, then they return to Allah and become righteous. There is a wisdom and good in all Allah's predestinations. To be a Muslim, one must believe in all of Allah's predestinations, and he's required to accept them, with both their good and evil aspects:

In fact, all of Allah's predestination is good, even if some of it seems outwardly to be evil, distressful, or harmful, but in the end and no matter what, they include great good and extensive divine wisdom, whether it be in this life or the one after. The story of Moses and al-Khadir in the Quran (18:65-82) was not mentioned in as a form of narrative or storytelling, but as a matter of reflection and acknowledgment of the deficiency of the human soul and its hasty judgment of outwardly actions; Allah has disclosed the wisdom of al-Khadir's actions with Moses, even though they are actions that are apparently disapproved and rejected, but they involve abundant good inwardly.

The biggest mistake people fall into in this paradox is that they think Allah does whatever they will, like some sort of a genie that gives you infinite wishes; that's a grave mistake, because this world is nothing besides a testing hall where humans can freely choose to do as they like, to prove their worthiness of Allah's approval or wrath. This world is not meant to be a permanent residence for its dwellers; everything is going to end so nothing matters other than the record of our deeds, which is the only remaining thing that is kept besides our graves. It must be understood and acknowledged that even if we manage to create the greatest and most advanced empire on earth, or write the most wonderful novel, none of our accomplishments will last.

One day, the universe will shut down as if it never existed, and on that day, what significance can our achievements really have? This world is not meant as a permanent home of peace, but as a test, and as we know, a test requires that the possibility of failure should exist. If all humans acted in obedience to Allah, evil would not exist, but since Allah has given humans the freedom to disobey Him, they have the ability to do evil. If Allah is the Light of this world, we cannot put blame on Him for the darkness we encounter when we turn away from Him, distance ourselves from Him, and act against His wishes.

Free will is the main concept of life; Allah did not make this world an eternally perfect place because that's not its purpose. Imagine if you were a creator of creatures, for example; the creatures you made were controlled by their nature to do exactly what you put in them to do, thus they could never be truly your friends. They would be subservient robot-like machines that cannot help doing whatever you put in them to do. However, if you wanted to make creatures that could truly be your friends, the only way to have a true friend is to create a creature that can choose whether to be your friend or not, and that is by implementing free will into your creatures rather than according to your strict programming.

Some of these creatures will choose to be your friends, others will ignore you, others will choose to be your enemies. They will fight among themselves and kill each other, then blame you, their creator, for the evil they do or for even creating them in the first place, when in truth they should blame themselves, for they are the ones choosing to act the way they do. They have the freedom to be good, in fact, if many of them chose to be good, some of them will choose to be evil instead.

That's life; the evil done by humans on earth is a doing of humans when they act against Allah, and it's not a doing of Allah, therefore humans should be blamed, not Allah. Even the percieved evil done by nature is nature's own doing, caused by the rules of physics, and Allah doesn't want to interfere with it because constant interference with nature would cause His existence to become apparent, and life (i.e., the test) to become a failure in its own terms since the cheat sheet is obvious and clear. The world needs to make perfect, logical sense without having to refer to Allah in our thinking. It should be possible for us to believe that the world functions on its own, without anything supernatural existing, and this is what gives us the freedom to believe and disbelieve in Allah.

Anyhow, this world is nothing more than a temporary preparation for the eternity of the afterlife. We would be wise not to become attached to its ups and downs, and to know that these are the days given to us by Allah in which we can prove ourselves to Him.

Now, that we're done with the Islamic standpoint and explanation of how this worldly life works, off to a more logically comprehensive refutation, for an atheist, at least; a well-known logical saying goes like this: "A thing is known only by its opposite."

Stars don't shine in the daylight; there has to be darkness so that we know what the bright light of the stars are like. Light and dark must coexist for one side to exist, pretty much, and that's applicable to every pair of opposites; heat and coldness, beauty and ugliness, intellectuality and stupidity, etc.

Now, this one example has to be scrutinized; temperature is an unfixed increasing value, as it has no upper limit, yet a fixed lower limit. To elaborate, the lowest temperature theoretically possible is 0 K (-273.15°C), but on the other hand, it's probably even impossible to know what the highest temperature possible could be, meaning we won't know temperature's upper limit. Therefore, heat is a value, energy, if you want to say so; coldness is not, as what we would define as "cold" would be "the absence and the inexistence of heat."

Another example is on intelligence; intellectuality increases without a fixed value on the IQ test scale, whereas the lowest level is 0 IQ as a fixed value, which would mean that a person cannot answer the IQ test due to the inevitable physical impairment which we all internationally recognize as "death." The concept of a negative IQ doesn't exist neither in reality nor in theory, and this similar path of rationalization could be applied to every pair of opposites; lightness and darkness, beauty and ugliness, decency and indecency, justice and injustice, etc.

Similarly; goodness is an infinitely increasing value, and there wouldn't be evilness without it because the inexistence of evil (i.e., absence of goodness) would imply that goodness doesn't exist. There's no way for a human being to be conscious of the meaning of good if there was no evil, nor to discern good from evil, therefore, we'd live in a world without evil nor good; a completely meaningless, purposeless, and purely materialistic world without any end goals.

One might say that: "Allah could've prevented evil by making good exist without evil," but right then, free will would not exist as well, because we'd be forced only to commit goodness, and the ability of commiting evil deeds would be entirely prohibited. This conflates with the purpose of life itself, which is solely built on the free will of human beings; life is a test, and a test requires freedom of choice, including the choice to create evil by acting against Allah's commands.

Imagine if that's the case; when the Day of Resurrection comes, everybody would enter Paradise, but that'd be completely unjust, as there could be a group of people that if they had the opportunity to do evil, they would've done it out of will, and this is unfair, because the people who had the opportunity to commit evil deeds and didn't commit them are more deserving of Paradise than the people who wanted to. Allah possesses absolute knowledge, so how can He enter these people into Paradise and make them equal to the other people who, if evil was made available to them, they wouldn't have done it? This is complete injustice (unless you think that the righteous deserve to be on the same level to that of the most vile of men).

Evil doesn't only bring disasters, it could also open the door to good. For example; someone was afflicted with a calamity, and it was a door to his repentance. Evil, here, led to good. If you prevent evil, you have closed one of the doors of goodness. Allah is absolutely good, so He must give all good, and all good requires the existence of evil, as we have previously logically explained.

In addition, evil is necessary for the world to exist; the world (according to a scientific theory, at best) came from an explosion known as the "Big Bang," and this explosion created a universe that consists of stars that turn into black holes destroying everything around it. The existence of black holes is important to the universe, of course, as they provide us with carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, which can be considered as the origin of life. The problem here is that the stars explode to transform themselves into black holes, destroying then planets, moons, and other stars in close proximity, with the possibility of living beings in them. This may seem like pure evil, but it's necessary for black holes to form in order to preserve the universe. Evil is necessary for the existence of the universe, and this is only a simple example.

One very important point is that two of Allah's beautiful and most commonly mentioned names in the Quran implying his absolute mercy are Ar-Rahmān (ٱلْرَّحْمَـٰنُ) and Ar-Rahīm (ٱلْرَّحِيمُ), which both mean "The Most Merciful" and "The Bestower of Mercy." In order to have mercy on a person, he must sin or do something wrong so that you can do it. Doing wrong requires the existence of evil, therefore, because Allah's attribute is mercy, which is one of the many forms of goodness, this requires the existence of evil:

Finally, for an atheist, arguing about the "existence of evil" isn't really all that rationally tenable as one may seem to think; atheistically and materialistically, there exist absolutely no objective definitions of morality (i.e., what is good and what is evil) in the first place, as we have already explained in one of our articles, Secular Morality, so it doesn't make sense for an atheist to argue on the topic of theodicy.