The Necessity of Evil

“I know I'm who I am today because I knew you.” This line from the Broadway musical Wicked sums up Robert Adams’ article “Existence, Self Interest, and the Problem of Evil,” very nicely. Many of us have met someone in the past that we wish that we hadn’t, but if we never met them then we wouldn’t be the same person that we are today. Adams says this same thing about evil in our world. While looking at Adams’ argument, and the evil that has happened in our world, we will be able to see that if there is a God, he is not evil for letting these events happen, because without these events we, the world as we know it would not exist.

Adams begins his article by stating “If all evils that happen are good for the individuals to whom they happen, that is reason enough for a perfectly good being to cause or permit them.” This is the main premise of his article and he keeps coming back to. The notion that if a person views his/her life as �good’ and �worth living’ then God cannot be evil because without the evil in the world they would not exist. Adams uses the example of World War I, and that if it would not have happened his parents might not have met, and married, therefore he would not have been born. This is a good example, but it can also be seen going back farther in history. If Adam and Eve had not sinned, or if God would have started over after they did, the world we currently know and love would not be here, nor would it be anything close to what we know now.

Adams defends his theory by four statements; 1) Individuals would not have the lives that they do except for many and great evils; 2) Individuals whose lives are worth living have no reason to lament the evil in their lives; 3) If apparent evils are good for the individuals who endure them, then God is justified in permitting them; and 4) Thus, individuals whose lives are worth living have no reason to blame God or to doubt God’s existence. This theory both states that there is a God, and that he is good even with evil in the world. Many individuals who believe there is a God, and who do believe that he is not good due to all of the evil in the world don’t understand why he created a world that has evil, in this theory we see why. If God had created a world that was evil free, then the current population of the world would not be here. Yes, there would be people on the planet, but it would not be the same people, or the same types of lives that people live today, everything would be different. These people are then saying that the good that has come from all the evil in our history is not important and if the evil that started the chain of events was eliminated the world would be a much better place to live even without their existence in it.

When looking at Adams’ theory, I can agree with it 100 percent. I feel that God is good, even though he creates evils, these evils are necessary to help our world find the goods. Without Adam and Eve sinning, we would not be where we are today, and we would not have the wonderful experiences that we do. That one sin proves that God wanted the human population to have freedom, and to be able to make decisions for themselves. If God had not given Adam and Eve the freedom to choose for themselves to sin, or if he would have �wiped the slate clean’ and started over, our lives would not be what they are today, there would be no freewill, and every person would be almost identical. This is not the lives that anyone wants to live, and God realized that when he created the world, God knew