9

Arguments against monotheism

Three questions

A

theodicy is an explanation of the role that evil plays in God’s
overall plan. A defense regarding evil is an argument that evil does
not provide evidence that God does not exist. An argument from
evil is an attempt to show that the existence of evil provides evidence that
God does not exist. So there arise three questions regarding God and evil:
Is there an adequate theodicy? Is there a successful defense regarding evil?
Is there a successful argument from evil?
While the issues that come up in the attempt to develop a theodicy are of
significant philosophical and religious interest, they typically occur within
the context of a fairly detailed theology, and we will not try to develop one
here. With one exception, we will set the first question aside.

Reincarnation, karma, and evil

The doctrine of reincarnation claims that each person is embodied in a
newly born body, lives a human life for however long that body lives, and
when that body dies the person who has been embodied in it becomes
embodied in another newly born body.^1 This process is, for each person
other than Brahman or God, beginningless and ends only if the person
becomes enlightened or is saved. The doctrine of karma says that the
physical, social, economic, political, etc. conditions under which a person is
embodied and lives a given lifetime are the conditions rendered appropriate
by the person’s action in previous lifetimes. The two claims together yield a
third: what evils occur to a person in a given lifetime are morally proper,
being the appropriate consequences of what the person has previously
done. God, of course, is not subject to reincarnation.
At least from some monotheistic standpoints, there is an attractiveness
to this doctrine. All evils are just punishments. For example, if an infant is
stillborn or has severe birth defects, these things happen, not to a person
just coming to be, but to a person who has a long and intricate series of