Discussing the problem of evil

This is a paper I wrote dealing with the problem of evil for a Philosophy of Religion class. I DO NOT INTEND FOR THIS TO CAUSE A RELIGIOUS DEBATE! If you want to discuss the existence or nonexistence of God or God and morality and such things, please do not do so in responses to this paper! I am more interested about whether the arguments seem cohesive, valid and sound. You are free to argue with the argument, but please keep it FRIENDLY and as unbiased as possible. Remember, this paper does not try to prove God, only that the idea of a perfect being and the existence of evil are not logically contradictory notions, so do not harangue me for not proving God exists, when that isn’t my purpose at all. I’ll let the rest speak for itself; questions and comments are of course welcome (I got a one hundred on the paper, but mind you, it was in a five page limit, and the perfect score was in terms of expectations, not necessarily the success of the arguments!)

A Theodicy from Evil and Morality

I will here argue the theodicy that God is morally required to allow evil in order to make moral excellence possible. This requires that the evil actions be possible so that one might demonstrate in acts of free will one’s moral standing. If the possibility of evil is necessary for the highest good, that is, moral free will which chooses to do good, then God cannot intercede last-minute to stop evil, but must allow it. Two strong objections are: one, that there is no free will, and two, that if morality must preclude the ability to do evil, then God must be able to do evil, or he is therefore morally neutral. I will use Aquinas’s Five Ways to consider an argument for free will, and inquire into the nature of God to offer speculation on how we could view his moral nature.
These are the premises of my argument. (1) Moral goodness from free will is the highest good. (2) One should want to achieve the highest good, and do what is possible to do so. (3) Moral evil must be possible, or humans cannot be morally good. (4) God, all-good and perfectly moral, must allow evil so that moral good can be possible.
Our morality is ethical decisions which come from our free will: moral good is done freely, and moral evil is done freely. We intuitively praise as highest goods which come from free will, such as the good of love, or of charity, or of friendship. It is my understanding that for one to be morally good, it must be possible for moral badness. For example, say that it is morally repugnant for a human being to sprout wings and fly (setting aside for the moment the demand for a clear cut definition of good and evil). If someone were to come to you and say, “My, what a splendid human being you are! You did not sprout wings and fly! You are a morally excellent creature!” odds are good that such a statement, if made in any seriousness, would be the object of ridicule. Obviously, since it is not in one’s power to do such an action, it cannot be considered moral. Therefore:
(1) To be a relevant moral law, it must be conceivably breakable.
(2) If an action is impossible, even if it is conceivably evil, one is not morally excellent for not committing it.

For example: I have never murdered anyone in China. I am not a good person for this: I have never been to China, nor do I have the resources to get there, so my omission of such an action is irrelevant to my status as a moral being.
Assuming a God in the conventional sense, one who is loving and thoroughly righteous, it is understandable that despite his presumed perfect goodness and omnipotence, he would be morally required to allow the very worst of evils to be done. In fact, to allow for the true status of moral excellence, God would have to make it possible for free wills to choose evil, or else they would not be free, and therefore he would be preventing the highest good. And it is not enough that God only allows a smaller degree of evil. The very worst evils result, ostensibly, from the breaking of the highest moral laws. For if it is not possible to break the highest of moral laws, then it is not possible to be the most excellent of moral creatures. Suppose that:
(A) is a trivial moral law.
(B) is an important moral law.
(C) is the greatest moral law.

If I was able to conceivably break laws A and B, but was physically restrained from breaking C, then I am not morally excellent for adhering to C, and am in no way responsible for upholding it. For me to be at my moral best, I must uphold moral laws A, B, and C, while being fully capable of breaking them all. So, if God were to make the greatest moral good possible, he would have to create a moral free will capable of committing the greatest of evils, or the will is not truly morally free, and therefore not as excellent as possible. And we have agreed that we intuitively hold things in highest esteem that result from our free will, such as love, and in this case, morality. And since God is perfectly good, his desire is to create a world in which the highest moral excellence is possible, so he must create creatures both capable of upholding all moral laws, from trivial to great, and of breaking them as well.
In summary, maximum evil must be possible, or a person cannot prove maximum goodness. As the perfectly moral being, God must create beings fully capable of doing moral evil and moral good, for if he did not, he would be creating a world in which the highest moral good is not possible, which as the perfect moral being he cannot do, for he must allow for the greatest of goods.
A strong argument against this is simply determinism. If determinism is true, then there is no free will, and talk of moral excellence is nonsense. Determinism states that everything happens as the result of a cause: our actions are the results of causal reasons, which can be traced down a causal chain without ever needing to mention free will. And for any free actions, it seems that one cannot have a reason for acting, or that reason is the determining factor and therefore it is not free will. But I think consideration of Aquinas’s proofs for God could yield something of an argument for free will. In the universal causal chain, there is either an infinite regression, or there is not. If there is not, there is an uncaused cause. The person who rejects infinite regressions is not considered irrational, even though one is possible, because though we cannot disprove one, an uncaused cause may appear more rational to that thinker. God, of course, is assumed to be this uncaused cause. Now certainly, Aquinas’s proof does not prove God, but it demonstrates that an Uncaused Causer is rational. With this in mind, we could inquire into what motivates the Uncaused Causer. Why does it cause things? Randomness? Surely not, or randomness would be causing it, and then it would not be uncaused. Other factors, reasons for action? Again, no causes can be moving God: he is uncaused, either by ordinary causes or by randomness. So, he must move somehow, and that is by a sort of eternal motion of will, what I will call Uncaused Causality. In this sense, God’s will is the most free. It is caused neither by randomness nor other causes. As is famously said, I postulate that God created people in his image. An aspect of this, the Free Will Defender says, is Uncaused Causality. Now, this free will is not nearly as dynamic as God’s. We are limited by our bodies, by our talents and by our environments in the realm of physical possibility. But what we are not limited by is our ability to choose our actions freely, from inside our determined system. The determinist will argue that our Uncaused Causality is irrational, but my reply is: But the ultimate Uncaused Cause is acceptable to anyone considering the universal causal chain. So our wills can be said to freely make new moral causal chains, and when we move to do so, we have neither ordinary causes nor randomness moving us, but the third force, Uncaused Causality, our limited version of what God instances most perfectly.
The second, equally strong, objection is that if moral evil is necessary, and God is all-good and so incapable of evil, he cannot be moral by this theodicy, which most theists would be disturbed by. When God acts, classically he can only do good, and therefore is not moral, since he cannot freely choose otherwise. Now, I have argued for Uncaused Causality as the root of free will, and God is completely uncaused, but invoking this doesn’t seem to get us out of the problem. My reply is that God is the supreme instance of morality; he is the standard Being and isn’t separable from moral law. It’s not that he causes morality or that it causes him, but that morality is in the very essence of God, so he cannot deviate from it. God is not the exception to the rule; he is the rule by which free wills measure themselves. So, moral laws A, B, and C cannot be broken by God, anymore than I can choose to stop being a human being. My moral free will has parameters of my physical person; God has the parameters of being the morality to which one ascribes. We might not like limiting God in this way, but likes and dislikes are not philosophical arguments. The objector may reply: But why didn’t God simply make more free wills that were perfect instances of morality? Because you can’t duplicate a standard. The standard is itself. If God is the standard, he must be the only instance of it. We cannot be the standard; we can only try to emulate it. You cannot have more than one of a standard; you can have multiple things which fit a standard, but those things can deviate or return to it without changing the standard itself. So with God. He is the spiritual incarnation of the standard of morality: we can emulate it, maybe even perfectly, but we cannot ourselves be the standard. According to the standard, we must choose to ascribe to it freely, so must be able to deviate from it; but a standard cannot deviate from itself.
I have argued that for humans to be moral, we must be able to choose the highest of moral evils in order to perform in moral excellence. I have noted two objections; from determinism, and concluded that our free will is a miniature form of Uncaused Causality; and from God’s morality, and replied that God is the only standard of morality, so does not need to measure up to himself to be himself. This is my theodicy for the problem of evil.