Talk:Religious responses to the problem of evil

Content copied

Content here is copied from Problem of evil which is being split because of length Jenhawk777 (talk) 00:26, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Red links

2600:1012:b011:d0ca:41f9:ddd2:e205:6de (talk · contribs) You didn't eliminate dead links you eliminated red links which are articles that have not yet been written. Putting them in articles signals to other editors that these need writing. [[1]] Good red links help Wikipedia—they encourage new contributors in useful directions, and remind us that Wikipedia is far from finished. They should be restored accordingly. Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:25, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Empty section, please expand

The Individual opinions subsection under the Christianity section is empty. I did not delete the section altogether as I feel if expanded, could benefit the article. Not0nshoree (talk) 05:52, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Nvm I may be stupid

Drive-by comment

Saw this listed at WP:GAN. I was a bit surprised to find neither the problem of evil article nor the theodicy article linked in the WP:LEAD here. Both should probably be included. TompaDompa (talk) 21:19, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing this! I edited the lead to incorporate both of your suggestions. Brent Silby (talk) 09:57, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This review is transcluded from Talk:Religious responses to the problem of evil/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Brent Silby (talk · contribs) 16:11, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: MediaKyle (talk · contribs) 13:21, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Introduction

Hi there Brent Silby, thank you for your patience, and for your work on this article. I'll be starting this review today. Please respond to each suggestion with a separate inline comment. During the course of a review, I'll typically read through an article in its entirety numerous times, each time focusing on a different element of the GA criteria. I'll continue adding to each section of this review until we reach the end. Because this is such a long article, dealing with some rather in-depth subjects, once I complete my part of the review I'll likely invite someone smarter than I am to provide a second opinion. Let me know if you have any questions. MediaKyle (talk) 13:21, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi @MediaKyle! Thanks for taking your time to review the article. I have acted upon all of your suggestions. I have also included incline comments under every one of your suggestions. Brent Silby (talk) 13:55, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello again, @MediaKyle. I have successfully fixed every single one of the issues that you have raised :) Brent Silby (talk) 20:12, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

That's great, the article is looking good. I'm going to give it another read now. MediaKyle (talk) 21:21, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi Brent Silby. I'm a little confused about something, likely just because I don't usually delve this deep into theology. Under the evidential problem of evil, it provides a version from Paul Draper. Draper is associated with Skeptical theism, which seems to act as a defense of theistic approaches to the problem of evil, and this topic isn't mentioned. Could you give me a brief rundown of how all this fits together? I must be missing something here. MediaKyle (talk) 21:57, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi @MediaKyle! Sure, I'd be happy to explain. Draper was the person who originated the phrase "skeptical theism" to demarcate theists whose response to the problem of evil is to say that we don't know enough about God and God's attribute to be able to correctly predict what he would and would not do and what motivations he would have. However, Draper, despite coming up with the name for this group of people actually thinks this response fails to defuse the evidential problem of evil. As far as I know he is an agnostic. Brent Silby (talk) 22:04, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, now it makes sense. Do you think it would be worth writing a passage about this under the section "Evidential problem of evil"? After all, given the article is about religious responses to the problem of evil, in terms of breadth it seems appropriate to include this view and a brief explanation of Draper coining the term. MediaKyle (talk) 22:14, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

I would probably advise against it because it's very hard to consider it a religious response. It really is a philosophical response. In fact, I am aware of some troubles that this response faces with reconciling itself with a personal God of major Abrahamic religions. In addition to that, I have pulled up Draper's revised evidential problem of evil (which is stronger than the original one). Classical skeptical theist response targets the original problem, so including it would potentially cause confusion. Brent Silby (talk) 22:21, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

I see what you're saying, that makes sense. I trust your judgement. MediaKyle (talk) 22:26, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Another observation that doesn't fit neatly into any of the other sections. I noticed that Hinduism is a subheader under "Other religions", despite actually being quite a bit longer than the section on Islam. Now I understand why this was done; I imagine it was formatted in this way to preserve a neat and alphabetical ordering, to keep the Abrahamic religions together while not allowing for any ambiguity on why they're ordered in the way they are. However, in doing so, I feel as though it gives the impression that the Abrahamic religions are the "main ones", whereas Buddhism and Hinduism are simply "other religions." What do you think? MediaKyle (talk) 23:14, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

That's a fair point. I can make Hinduism and Buddhism into separate sections, but then that would require making greek paganism into a separate section, which would probably be giving it too much weight. I do think that (at least in theory) putting all these religions into the "other" section can be justified. Problem of evil is only a problem for religions who claim that God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. Mainstream Hinduism and Buddhism (and Greek paganism) don't necessarily do it.

So whereas the problem of evil is the problem for mainstream formulations of Abrahamic religions, it is only threat to minority positions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Brent Silby (talk) 23:47, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Yes, when you put it that way, it does make sense that these would be grouped together. The rationale for keeping it that way is such that I'm not concerned of any possible perception of bias. MediaKyle (talk) 00:03, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Prose

• Under "Christianity":
  • There is general agreement among Bible scholars
  • There is general agreement among biblical scholars
    • Y Changed Bible scholars to biblical scholars as you have requested.
  • I didn't notice this on my first go-over, but I think these sentences should be rewritten in your own words rather than using a quote. It seems a little ironic to say that there's "general agreement among scholars" only to source one book, as well - if there's general agreement, surely there's plenty of scholars saying this.
    • Y Removed that entire claim. It is unnecessary for the general meaning of the section. Thanks for noticing!

• Genesis 4:1–8 and the first murder suggest much suffering is the result of individual choices.
  • Sentence is unclear without prior context on "the first murder"
    • Y Changed "the first murder" into "the murder of Abel" with a link to the biblical story.

• Luke 22:31–34 says resist the fear and despair that accompany suffering, instead remember/believe God has the power to help.
  • Remember/believe, which one?
    • Y It's believe, the passage is talking about faith, not necessarily knowledge (gnosis). Removed the "remember".

• The writers of the Bible take the reality of a spiritual world beyond this world and its containment of hostile spiritual forces for granted. While the post-Enlightenment world does not, the "dark spiritual forces" can be seen as "symbols of the darkest recesses of human nature."
  • This whole passage should be rewritten to be more clear and concise. As it currently is, it might also border on an NPOV issue, but that could be debatable.
    • Y Removed the entire passage because: 1) It didn't have enough sources to justify saying what writers of the Bible take for granted. 2) It was very awkwardly written. 3) It didn't contribute much to the section.

• Under "Privation theory of evil":
  • St Augustine of Hippo
  • Saint Augustine of Hippo
    • Y Changed all instances of "St" into "Saint".

• First paragraph of "Tradition and philosophy" should be rewritten for clarity - will come back with suggestion
  • Y I removed it entirely. It seemed unnecessary to the general topic (and was only 2 sentences anyways). The section's flow is much more dynamic when it starts directly with a proposed theodicy.

• Under "Hinduism":
  • the 8th-century scholar Adi Shankara states that just because some people are happier than others and just because there is so much malice, cruelty, and pain in the world, some state that Brahman cannot be the cause of the world. - What?
    • Y Good catch! The sentence should read "the 8th-century scholar Adi Shankara states that because some people are happier than others and because there is so much malice, cruelty, and pain in the world, Brahman cannot be the cause of the world."

• Under "Irenaean theodicy"
  • Starting with the second paragraph, this section directly quotes a numbered list for the first four key points, with the rest seeming to have been reworded, and it's not exactly made clear which is which. My suggestion for this part would be to remove the directly quoted list and replace it with your own prose; this would also make it flow a lot more nicely.
    • Y Followed all suggestions: deleted the list, replaced it with Hick's quote, made it easier to read and parse.
• For Augustine, humans were created perfect but fell and thereafter... - Fell from where? Perhaps different wording could be used here.
  • Y Reworded the sentence to make it clear that we are referring to the fall of man here.

• Under "Original sin theodicy"
  • Martin Luther saw evil and original sin as an inheritance from Adam and Eve, passed on to all humans from their conception, which God's just nature allowed as a consequence of their distrust, though God planned humanity's redemption through Jesus Christ. Ultimately, humans may not be able to understand and explain this plan. - That's a real mouthful, could probably be split into two separate sentences. The last sentence could also be reworded for NPOV.
    • Y Split the sentence into 2 parts and removed the last sentence entirely.

Referencing & Verification

• 14: Quote on the article is not the same as the one in the source text
  • Y The reference was to the book that quoted Hume, but you do have a good point. I replaced it with a direct reference of Hume.
    • What I meant by this was the quote in the text doesn't exactly match up with the quote in the source. The exact wording as seen in the book preview is "Epicurus's old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able ? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing ? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil ?". The original quote is a little less clear, which is likely why the wording was changed, but if we're quoting someone I'd say it's inappropriate to modify what they said. Maybe this would be another case in which rather than directly quoting the source, you could explain it in your own words? ** ****Y I have been able to found Hume's quote that's pretty clear and straightforward. It uses the word such as "impotent" and "malevolent", which is nice, since it doesn't feel like a repetition of the general formulation listed below.
• 16: Source appears to verify the text
• 23: Is there a source available discussing this interpretation, rather than directly citing Corinthians? This probably isn't a big deal, but it would be nice.
  • Y Yep, added 3 sources that discuss the meaning of Paul's suffering.
• 27: Source verifies the text
• 30: Source verifies the text.
• 56: Source verifies the text.
• 82: Could there be additional sources for this information than just The Iliad? If you think this is sufficient, let me know, just seemed like somewhere that could use a couple more citations.
  • Y Yep, added reference to an in-depth analysis of greek gods in particular and mythology in general. It is a great book, despite being written quite a while ago it has a good prose.

• Many of these sources are books, which I cannot immediately access. While nothing stands out as being problematic, the sourcing will have to be gone over by someone more familiar with the literature.
  • As an addendum to this - upon further reflection, this is actually outside of the scope of a good article review. I'm satisfied with the quality of the sources, and if there was a specific book that was in fact problematic, I trust that the nominator would have picked it out. MediaKyle (talk) 22:38, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Breadth & Neutrality

• The article is overall written in an encyclopedic tone, but in some ways the neutrality of the article could probably be improved. There's a number of instances where the text seems to speak rather matter-of-factly, in regards to the specific religion it's discussing at the time. An example would be:
  • Buddhism accepts that there is evil in the world, as well as Dukkha (suffering), which is caused by evil or natural causes (aging, disease, rebirth). Evil is expressed in actions and states of mind, such as cruelty, murder, theft, and avarice, which are a result of the three poisons: greed, hatred, and delusion.
    • Y Changed the paragraph to make it clear that it refers to Buddhist teachings/beliefs of Buddhists, rather than beliefs of Wikipedia.
  • Parts like these should probably be rewritten to make it more clear that the article is relaying the views of these religions, rather than stating them in Wikipedia's voice.
• Hinduism is a complex religion with many different currents or religious beliefs. - What do you think about this sentence? I would agree from my Western point of view that Hinduism is a "complex" religion, but I'm not sure if one book from the 70s referring to it as complex is enough to use that language in the article. Maybe this could be expanded to provide more context about what exactly makes Hinduism more complex, rather than just overtly stating so.
  • Y I could do that, but reading this sentence again, I think that the word "complex" should probably be removed entirely rather than expanded. I would feel that no adherent of a given religion would want to have their faith called complex (which might be similar to "convoluted", which has some negative connotation from an NPOV perspective). I will rephrase the sentence entirely to avoid that.
    • Good thinking, I much prefer your solution. "Multifaceted" is a more neutral term. MediaKyle (talk) 15:26, 7 March 2025 (UTC)
• The second paragraph of the section "Islam" needs some similar adjustments to the part on Buddhism. For example,
  • This dialectical effort led to the formation of Mu'tazilah theodicy. So because Allah (God) is all-just and wise, it is impossible for Allah to do or carry out things that are contrary to reason.
  • This dialectical effort led to the formation of Mu'tazilah theodicy, which states that because Allah (God) is all-just and wise, it is impossible for Allah to do or carry out things that are contrary to reason.
  • The subsequent sentences in this paragraph also need to be adjusted in this way.
    • Y Yep, reformulated that section, as requested. It looks good now.
• Under "Judaism"
  • It is easier to rationalize suffering caused by theft or accidental injuries, but the physical, mental, and existential horrors of persistent events of repeated violence over long periods of time, such as the Holocaust, or an innocent child slowly suffering from the pain of cancer, cannot be rationalized by one-sided self-blame and belittling personhood. - This reads to me like a quote that wasn't put in quotation marks; nevertheless, this sentence and the following sentence should be rewritten for NPOV and clarity.
    • Y Removed this sentence entirely, it doesn't affect the meaning of the section in any way.

Copyvio Check

• Earwig returned a couple of false positives in the "unlikely" range, likely due to the repetition of certain terms. No violations have been found, and the potential concern listed below has been resolved.
• Another examination reveals close paraphrasing in the second paragraph of Privation theory of evil from newadvent.org, some of the text being directly copied from this source.
  • Y Completely changed the paragraph.
    • Just as a note: I think this wasn't as much of a copyvio concern as it was simply a quote that wasn't attributed quite right. The website linked above seems to have been directly quoting the work of Saint Aquinas, which I'd venture a guess to say is probably public domain. The nominator has sufficiently addressed the concern nevertheless. MediaKyle (talk) 23:34, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Summary

• Well-written: This article is well-written with no wonky prose; all issues raised above have been resolved. The article complies with the relevant Manual of Style guidelines.
• Verifiable: The article is verifiable, as per the notes above.
• Broad in its coverage: The article is as broad as it reasonably could or should be; as noted above, the problem of evil primarily applies to the Abrahamic religions, while other variations of the problem in other religions are included for breadth.
• Neutral: This article is written in an encyclopedic tone, and all issues raised above regarding potential NPOV issues have been resolved. The article provides due weight to each religion it discusses, without any editorial bias.
• Stability: Stable as can be, no edit wars or content disputes in sight.
• Images: This article is well illustrated. All images in the article are appropriately tagged with their licensing information, and are suitably captioned.

Congratulations, Brent Silby, on your first good article! I hope you continue your good work to improve coverage of these topics on Wikipedia. This review was fascinating, and I learned a lot. Thanks a lot for your contributions. MediaKyle (talk) 23:09, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Peer review

Religious responses to the problem of evil

I've listed this article for peer review because I've made significant contributions and would like to further improve its quality. As one of the primary contributor actively working on this page, I'm hoping someone can take the time to review it and offer constructive feedback.

Thanks, Brent Silby (talk) 22:38, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Comments from PJW

Hi User:Brent Silby,

With the article still fresh from a thorough GA review, my comments focus on general areas for possible improvement. Everything seems fine at the sentence-level.

For better or worse, I found that I had more to say than I had expected.

As you probably know, because this is a peer review, you are under no obligation to implement my suggestions, and there is no kind of grade assigned at the end. Please just ask if anything below is unclear (or if I maybe just made a mistake!).

Lead

• Since the lead is a summary of the body, the body is the source for the article (see WP:CITELEAD). If anything is important enough to be in the lead that is not already supported in the body, it needs to be incorporated somewhere appropriate in body of the article. Aside from just looking nicer, imo, this would come up at FAC–most GA and FA articles have no citations in their leads (or infoboxes, for that matter).
• For accessibility, would the first sentence be better with "all-powerful/knowing/&loving"? Even for articles on technical or otherwise complicated subjects, I do my best to keep the lead no higher than about a 7th-grade reading level.
• When they are at least provisionally done with their work on the body, I also always advise editors to reread WP:LEAD all through to strengthen the current version. This is the only part of the article that many visitors will read.

Sections on evil

• The article needs to provide a definition of evil. Include as many disclaimers and qualifications as you need: we are not looking for necessary and sufficient criteria here, but we need at least a loose working definition that distinguishes it from suffering, with which it is frequently conjoined throughout the article. I do see one sentence in the lead, but this should be covered in the body, almost certainly in the first section.
• You might consider demoting the first two sections under another section, which could include a Definition in ahead of them. A section-lead could then be introduced as well. These are not required, but it would be a good place to cite a secondary overview or tertiary source to establish that what you are including here is supported by the literature, as opposed to just whatever most interests you and other page editors. This is particularly an issue because Rowe and Draper and primary sources on themselves, which is a problem. Justifying inclusion in this way is important at FAC. It's also nice to have a policy-based response to editors who want to add large amounts of material on marginal viewpoints.

Early Christian responses

• The opening quote is a mess. Could this be restated in your own words or otherwise reworked to avoid the ellipses and bracketed terms?
• The Plummer paragraph makes use of some rather poetic language that will be obscure to non-theologians. It also relies entirely on a primary source.
• I think "fall of man" needs caps. I'd check with the folks at the MOS talk page, though, as I'm sure best practices for this sort of thing have been discussed. (There are a few more instances of this below.)
• I'd rewrite the Hick blockquote in encyclopedic prose unless there is a strong reason for keeping it as is.
• In this context, the title "Saint" is probably appropriate, but it might be a good idea to check.
• For Augustine, evil, when it refers to God's material creation, refers to a privation, an absence of goodness "where goodness might have been." This leaves me wondering to what other things it refers. If it's not important, you could just cut the qualifier; if it maybe is but is also highly technical, I'd consider a footnote.

Recent Christian responses

• I'd consider making this and the above their own top-level headers. As is, it's a long section, and breaking it in two might make the transition to the 20th century less jarring.
• There look to be a few more primary source issues here. If these views are not held more broadly, they maybe don't belong in the article. Otherwise, rewriting without in-text attribution would at least help to ameliorate the issue—even if probably not up to FAC standards. Also, I think it's best practice to include a descriptor when mentioning names unlikely to be familiar to readers.
• The Plantinga section is gives a lot of coverage to one philosopher. It also becomes a bit more technical than might be necessary. I also have concerns again about primary sources.

Contemporary post-Holocaust theodicy

• I would consider breaking this out under its own top-level header to be treated on its own after the three Abrahamic religions. Another option would be to re-title it "Post-Holocaust Christian theodicy" to make space for a specifically Jewish section later.
• The scant attention given to Jewish responses, which is alarming enough on its own, looks only worse when compared to the detailed discussion here. I probably would have raised this in a GA review, and it would definitely come up at FAC ("comprehensiveness of coverage").
• I'd encourage you to review the section for technical language. There's some stuff that should probably be removed or defined in simpler terms. Many people will not know the meaning of "eschatology". I do not myself recognize the word "enestological".
• As previously, check and be sure you don't use authors as sources on themselves, and summarize the blockquote if possible.

Islam and Judaism

• These sections are conspicuously shorter. If this is because Muslims and Jews simply have much less interest in the question, this should be stated clearly at the top of their respective sections with brief explanations. Right now, this gives the article at least the appearance of issues with WP:DUE. There is also appears to be much less engagement with more recent contributions of theologians in those traditions. If this is just because there is much less work being done, that's an excellent justification for the disparity, but this should somehow be made clear in the article.
• As I said above, Jewish responses to the Holocaust require more than a paragraph. One excellent scholar who has written about this extensively is Emil L. Fackenheim. Emmanuel Levinas is a major Jewish philosopher who has also written on post-Holocaust theodicy. It will not be difficult to find more.

Other religions

• This is already in the lead, but I would explain again in a section-lead here (or however you prefer) why these other major world religions are here being lumped together as "Other".
• Are you sure that the Ancient Greeks had a concept equivalent to our evil? The supporting citation of the most direct claim that they do goes to an entire book. Lack of page numbers appears to be an issue throughout the section.
• Just overall, this looks like it could be OR. I might be totally wrong, but the sourcing needs work either way.
• The treatment of Buddhism and Hinduism look good. No notes on them.

References

• I did not look at these closely, but did notice some inconsistencies with capitalization. FAC is the only place anyone would care about this though.

I hope you find these comments helpful! I'm following the page, but feel free to ping me if it looks like I missed a query.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 18:57, 19 April 2025 (UTC)