Key Definitions
Creation out of nothing:
The idea that God or anything else can bring something into existence without any prior material or cause.
Evil:
Often defined by Christians as not a real force, but as a lack or absence of good.
All-good God:
A deity that is completely perfect and morally good in every way.
Necessary existence:
The concept that some beings (like God, according to some philosophers) must exist and cannot not exist.
Nothing:
The complete absence of anything; no matter, no beings, no existence at all.
Goodness:
Moral value or perfection, often claimed by theists to originate from God.
Evil as negation:
The idea that evil is not a real thing on its own but simply the absence or lack of good, like darkness is the absence of light.
Evil as a substance:
The belief that evil is an actual, independent force or entity, not just the absence of good.
Problem of evil:
The philosophical question of how an all-good, all-powerful God can allow evil to exist.
THE ARGUMENT
How can an all-good God make evil? Believers say He cannot. They say evil does not really exist — it is just good in the wrong place or a lack of good.
Believers say, quite logically, that if evil is a real substance, then God makes it — so God is at least partly evil.
Why does anything exist?
The default is that nothing should — nothing is the right or best "state."
Reason seems to say it is more reasonable for there to be nothing rather than something.
Philosophers assume that there are entities such as God that necessarily exist — in other words, it was impossible for beings that necessarily exist not to exist. But all that can necessarily "exist" is nothing. Yet there is something. Everything else, including God, cannot then necessarily exist. They are not necessary beings; none of them is the ground of all being, the entity that cannot not exist or not have existed.
The necessary being argument assumes, "As God exists, He simply just had to exist." It is an assumption, not an argument.
Anything existing then is in defiance of how there should have been nothing at all.
Is existence then a lack of good?
We are reminded that it is not necessary evil for a good to be lacking. For example, the baby not having wings to fly is not evil. The baby is not meant to have wings.
But at the same time, you have no way to prove that it is stupid to say it is evil. You have no right to influence others to assume like you — that it is not evil.
So you are on the fence.
Jesus made the point that evil is so terrible and an utter Pandora's box that whoever is not against it is for it. So being on the fence in that sense makes you evil — an example of how the doctrine that evil is a lack indirectly and inherently corrupts. The doctrine is evil.
Even if God and the creation are good, their existence is a lack of good or even evil. Contradiction? No — an accident is bad overall, but it is good if it stops the murderer from reaching his destination.
[If we reason that nothing is bad for letting us exist and bad if it doesn't, how do we solve the contradiction? If nothing hadn't made us, it wouldn't be doing us any wrong. It has the right to make nothing, to use analogical language. You don't owe a being that doesn't exist its existence. So nothing is bad for making us. We like how it is bad, for we like existing.]
If God’s existence is a lack of good and even bad, His making other things exist is worse. So, it is meaningless to try and defend God by saying that when He lets evil happen He is still all good, for evil is merely misplaced good.
If evil is just a lack, then God cannot sin, for He is perfect and too powerful to miss the mark.
It follows then that it is better for God to exist than not to exist — for if nothing existed, there would not be as much good. But this contradicts how nothing is good. I wish to say no more.
DIVINE PERFECTION
God is supposedly perfect. Yet "When He makes things less good than they could be, He is entitled to do that. He owes nothing to anyone." He should fix His own imperfection or try to compensate by making creatures that are as perfect as possible. An imperfect father on earth has no right to deliberately father a sick baby, say by passing on a disease to the child, for the father is imperfect. But surely if you are imperfect, you have more right to pass on imperfection than a perfect being who can stop imperfection but won’t, does?
Is it really good for useless things that do harm to exist? We don't need the AIDS virus, for example. The claim that God uses evil for a greater good says it is good for the virus to exist, which unmasks the malice in the idea that evil is a mere negation. There is a coldness in its supporters.
Proves God the Creator of All?
Some make the outrageous claim that there is no problem of evil, for evil is just good that is faulty or is nothing. So only good matters. They say that if you say there is no good God, then you end up with no reason to believe in good or understand where it came from.
The notion that God and goodness are somehow one so that there is no good unless there is a God is illogical. If there is nothing and no creator, it is good that there are no little kittens to suffer and die. Making good things does not mean that good needs to be made. Things are good simply because good does not need to be made. Good just is.
You will be told that goodness is originative, not derivative. Badness is derivative — it is derived from good. It is not originative. But that is arguing in circles, and all things originate something. It sneaks in the notion that good is the creator and so the creator is God!
So to believe in God you have to believe in the irrational. If you fail to see that good just is and need a theology to help you believe in God, that is evil.
BACK TO EVIL AND THE LACK OF GOOD
The notion that evil is the negation or absence of good is interesting — but it is also said that not every absence of good is evil. For example, a nurse has the absence of the energy to take on full-time care for 100 demanding children. We are told this is not evil, for she is not meant to have it. But that assumes things about God having a wise and good plan. Who are we to say that just because she doesn't have the energy, this lack is not evil? God may in fact disagree. To shoehorn things we see around us into a plan we know nothing about and which is not ours is hardly godly!
The notion that evil is a lack of good claims that if somebody became completely evil, he would cease to exist. It assumes that he would then lack the good of existence. It is not necessarily true or obvious that merely existing is good. So we lack proof or logical argument for the goodness of existence. We need it.
It is incoherent to say that evil is a lack of good and to accept that there is a lack of support for existence being good. The definition is merely a guess. If we want to say evil is serious, how can we if we are not even sure what it is?
I said earlier that evil can be seen as good in the wrong place and time. That is what the goodness of existence point would imply.
It is also defined as a lack of a good that should be there.
It can be both.
HYPOTHETICAL
What if there were a difference?
Evil is a lack of good.
Evil is good in the wrong place and time.
If there were a choice, if you had to literally forget one, which would it be?
It would be 1 for those who feel that losing sight of the lack aspect empowers evil. They fear that seeing it as some kind of energy will make you serve it.
It would be 2 for those who feel that it plays down how evil is harm.
There are those who say that if possible both should be forgotten, for they both clearly are toxic.
Finally
Existence is evil, for rationally there should be nothing, so existence contradicts reason.
If goodness requires the freedom to be bad, then God cannot be good. Evil is strongest — perhaps in its subtle form if there is a God. If you want to reinforce morality, then abandon God.
APPENDIX
I will not comment on a student concern:
"We know that for a thing to exist, it must be caused by something else or it causes itself, and God is His own cause. The notion that God always existed is compatible with how He Himself comes from nothing. The doctrine that He is the reason for His own existence means that He does come from nothing. If a stone came from nothing and is now 1000 years old, it is still coming from nothing now. It would be the same if it never had a beginning. It is not about a beginning but where it comes from. If nothing is so good and a God can come from it, then nothing doesn't need to make a God to be so good!
Despite the lengths people go to say that God is the reason for His own existence, He is the reason why He exists instead of nothing, we can be sure that most of them are treating nothing as some kind of cause or material."