VIEWPOINT: "NOT EVERY LACK OF GOOD IS EVIL" 

The Christian doctrine is that as God made all things and is good the problems in the created order must be down to people misusing their free will.

They say that good is the standard and anything that falls short of it is evil.  Evil is just the absence of a good that should be there but is not.  So as it is an absence there is nothing to create or make so the question of God creating evil does not arise.

Confusingly, some say that not every lack of good is evil. 

What do they mean?

A mouse lacks the strength to lift a boulder a human could lift.  This is not evil for the mouse is not meant to have that strength.  A human not being able do would be an evil. 

An ape cannot write a novel.  But this not evil for the ape is not due that power.

The idea is that something has gone wrong.  The divine design  has been marred by something.  Disorder has damaged the order set by God.  The Bible says that God has set up his work to be "very good" but now it has not kept to the original design.

But take the ape.  The answer is, "You assume the ape does not need and should not have that power.  But how do you know?  What if it should?"  If the answer is that it should, then perhaps the ape refutes the love of God or the existence of a loving God.

But then they answer, "People are meant to be able to hear and some are deaf.  People are meant to be able to see and some are blind.  These things do not disprove God."

So we are back where we started.  Nothing tells us if we should or should not believe in a God.

The whole argument is based on people assuming they know what a creature should be able to do. But they do not know.  It is clearly a form of ableism, the person who cannot hear or cannot see is in some way less useful and less valuable.  You might treat the person the same as a person who has exceptional gifts but that proves nothing.  It could be that your perception of their inferiority is so slight that it's not noticeable from your behaviour or even to yourself.  But it is ableist and is the sea that very damaging and even hateful ableism swims in.  Ableism feeds on ableism. 

Nothing inherently makes us happy. A pill that can inherently make us feel happy is not making us happy. How?  Because the pill is doing it for we can't do it so it's not inherent.  Religions claim that faith in their version of higher power or in them is the key to inherent happiness.  That is flatly a lie as well.  They are trying to do what the pill is doing.

So?

Nobody can say that having no power to be inherently happy is good.  It is evil.

Since that is the case, and happiness is so important, any argument trying to say that not all absences of good are evil is defunct.  It is nonsense.

When you think of happiness like that you see that God cannot be loving or simply does not exist.

 Then there is the rebuttal, "If somebody is grieving we do not encourage them to be happy but to face the pain. We can value things that do not make us happy. That power matters more than the power to let happiness in".  That is not the point.  Nobody's life is based on grief but happiness and you have to face the pain of grief in order to let happiness come again.

Unconditional love is about the other person and not you or what you believe or want to believe. Thus it means keeping God out of it. Loving the person for God is love or God wants you to love is not unconditional love.  Or to translate that more accurately, loving the person for you feel or think that God is love or that God wants you to love, is not unconditional love.  It makes it conditional on your religious opinion.

This leads us to this.

It is faith that God is real and is pure unconditional love.

So it is faith that God is not behind evil and evil is a lack of good that he had nothing to do with.

But faith contradicts unconditional love.

Therefore it makes no sense to say that evil is a lack of good on the basis of faith.

Evil being a lack of good then would have to be separated from God. It could be true and God untrue.

Moreover, if evil is the absence of good then we are saying good exists. But each situation is a combination meaning a lack here is balanced by a good there so its irrelevant to moral life.