Epistemic Contrast Defense

The Epistemic Contrast Defense says that you need to experience bad in order to appreciate (or even recognize) the good. You can’t have the idea of good without the idea of bad. So God lets us experience bad, in the form of evil and suffering, so that we can understand the good.

I decided to call this “the Epistemic Contrast Defense,” to help us distinguish it from another defense from another contrast defense which is, to my mind, much less plausible.

This other contrast defense, which we might call “the Metaphysical Contrast Defense,” claims that we can’t have good without evil, that the very existence of good is somehow dependent upon the existence of bad. Although this has a certain “ear appeal,” in that it often sounds good to say “you can’t have the good without the bad,” I’m not sure it’s true. Of course, as the world is currently set up, we’ll inevitably experience both good and bad things, but did the world have to be set up this way? To take an analogy, as the world is currently set up, we’re confronted by many different colors so we might say “you can’t have the red without the green,” for instance. But couldn’t the world have been set up in another way? Couldn’t the world have been all-red, or shades of red? I don’t see why not. Similarly, couldn’t the world have been all good? Why not? In fact, people who believe in Heaven might already believe in the existence of some all-good world. (I say “might” because conceptions of Heaven differ.)

However, if the world were all-good, would any of us recognize that it’s good? There seems to be some good reason to say that we wouldn’t. It’s hard – and perhaps impossible – for us to form the concept of a thing unless we experience a contrasting thing. We aren’t aware of the air-pressure unless it changes, for example. Thus, although the world could be all-red, we wouldn’t acquire the concept of red if it were, and without the concept of red, we couldn’t go around thinking “Gee, the world’s all-red.” We wouldn’t, in short, know that the world is all-red. Similarly, although the world could be all-good, that very fact would prevent us from formulating the concept of goodness, and that would prevent us from knowing that the world is all-good. But knowing that the world is good is really important, so God permits the bad things necessary in order for us consciously appreciate the good. That’s the Epistemic Contrast Defense.

This is a much more sophisticated (and hence trickier) defense than the previous three, so let’s set it out in diagram form.

1. God would permit the types of evil and suffering necessary for us to recognize the good.

2. Any world in which we can recognize the good is better than any world in which we can’t recognize the good.

3. God had a choice between making an all-good world in which we couldn’t recognize good, and a world with evil and suffering in which we could recognize good.

4. God can’t allow us to recognize good without allowing us to experience evil and suffering.

4

B |

2 + 3

A |

1

And there it is again - that restriction on what God is able to do! Virtue Defense claims that God can’t give us the virtues requiring evil and suffering without permitting evil and suffering. The Free Will Defense needs the claim that God can’t grant us free will without permitting its misuse. The And now the Epistemic Contrast Defense depends upon the claim that God can’t allow us to recognize good without allowing us to experience evil and suffering.

We can’t avoid it anymore; we’ll have to buckle down and think about whether there are things that God can’t do. If there are, then the Virtue, Free Will, and Epistemic Contrast Defenses have a chance of success and the Problem of Evil might be refuted. If there aren’t then none of the defenses of God will work, the Problem of Evil will stand, and we’ll be rationally compelled to believe that God doesn’t exist.

So, can God do absolutely everything, or not?