3. God's Omnipotence, His Moral Perfection, and His Knowledge of
Evil
Having defended the moral propriety of critically examining the argument from evil, I
will now do just that. The argument presupposes, and rightly, that two features God is
supposed to have are “nonnegotiable”: that he is omnipotent and morally perfect. That he
is omnipotent means that he can do anything—provided his doing it doesn't involve an
intrinsic impossibility. (Thus, even an omnipotent being can't draw a round square. And
God, although he is omnipotent, is unable to lie, for his lying is as much an intrinsic
impossibility as a round square.) To say that God is morally perfect is to say that he never
does anything morally wrong—that he could not possibly do anything morally wrong. If
omnipotence
end p.191
and moral perfection are nonnegotiable components of the idea of God, this fact has the
following two logical consequences. (1) If the universe was made by an intelligent being,
and if that being is less than omnipotent (and if there's no other being who is omnipotent),
the atheists are right: God does not exist. (2) If the universe was made by an omnipotent
being, and if that being has done even one morally wrong thing (and if there isn't another
omnipotent being, one who never does anything morally wrong), the atheists are right:
God does not exist. If, therefore, the Creator of the universe lacked either omnipotence or
moral perfection, and if he claimed to be God, he would be either an impostor (if he
claimed to be omnipotent and morally perfect) or confused (if he admitted that he was
less than omnipotent or less than morally perfect and still claimed to be God).
One premise of the simple version of the argument set out above—that an all-powerful
and morally perfect being would not allow evil to exist—might well be false if the all-
powerful and wholly good being were ignorant, and not culpably ignorant, of the
existence of evil. But this is not a difficulty for the proponent of the simple argument, for
God, if he exists, is omniscient. The proponent of the simple argument could, in fact,
defend his premise by an appeal to far weaker theses about the extent of God's knowledge
than “God is omniscient.” If the simple argument presents an effective prima facie case
for the conclusion that there is no omnipotent and morally perfect being who is
omnisicent, it presents an equally effective prima facie case for the conclusion that there
is no omnipotent and morally perfect being who has even as much knowledge of what
goes on in the world as we human beings have. The full panoply of omniscience, so to
speak, does not really enter into the initial stages of a presentation and discussion of an
argument from evil. Omniscience, omniscience in the full sense of the word, will become
important only when we come to examine responses to the argument from evil that
involve free will (see Section 9).
How shall we organize our critical examination of the argument from evil? I propose that
we imagine in some detail a debate about the existence of God, and that we try to
determine how effective a debating point the reality of evil would be for the party to the
debate who was trying to show that there was no God.