All Episodes
Previous Next
Sept. 21, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
24:26
Why God Allows Evil!
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
All right, great question from Ex-Listener.
A very deep question.
If there is a God who is all-powerful, then why does he allow for evil?
Why does he allow for evil?
It's a great question.
Of course, it's been asked many times in the sort of history of human thought.
There are answers.
I'm going to give you the general answer and then my issues with the general answer.
So the general answer is that it is not God who allows evil.
It is not God who allows evil.
It is God who allows free will.
And it is people who choose evil.
So you buy a game of chess.
And in the box that comes with the pieces and the board is a little rule book, right?
And would it make much sense to say, why is it that the people who make chess allow for cheating?
Well, no.
They give you the game and they give you the rules.
But they can't take over your brain and prevent you from cheating.
So let's say you're the older brother and you get the chess set and then you are teaching your younger brother how to play chess and you cheat.
You say that a piece can do what a piece can't do according to the rules and you cheat and then you win.
So if that is the case, then is that the fault of the people who make the chess rules?
No.
Because they're saying, here's the board, here's the pieces, and here are the rules for playing.
Now, if you break the rules, that is not the fault of the people who make the game, who delivered to you the rules.
Now, who cannot cheat at chess is a chess program.
A chess program that is put together, and I still occasionally think of the chess program I used to play on my old Atari 800, right?
So there was no programming in that chess program, and I've never seen any programming in any chess program, but there is no programming in any chess program that says, oh, yeah, you can cheat sometimes.
Sometimes the porn doesn't have to take diagonal and can move three spaces, right?
That's not how the programming works.
The programming for the chess game is to act in perfect fidelity to all the rules of chess.
There's a sort of series of rage-baity kind of videos on Instagram, I think it is, where, you know, the knight moves diagonally and so on, right?
And it's mildly funny.
And in most cases with Instagram, the comments are funnier than the actual video.
But that is the game.
If somebody gives you a car and teaches you how to drive it, they can't force you to not drive drunk.
They can't force you to not use it as a getaway car.
And they can't force you to not drive in oncoming traffic.
I mean, maybe with AI cars or self-driving cars or something like that.
But for the most part, they can't do that.
You get the car, you learn how to drive it, and off you go to do your thing with the car.
So when you are a parent, right, you have control over your children when they're babies and toddlers, and you have diminishing control of your children as they get older, right?
It's like that.
I mean, at least for me, what was a famous line from the Sopranos when Tony and his wife, Carmela Carmella, are complaining about the daughter, Medo Meadow.
And they say, he says, if she figures out we're powerless, we're doomed, right?
Because they don't hit, right?
And you can control, obviously the mother controls the location of the fetus because it's in her body.
And you control the location of the baby.
But once the baby crawls, you can control them less.
They walk, you can control them less.
When they get older, you can control them less.
And when they drive and have access to a car, you can control them less.
And then they go out into the world.
And hopefully they follow the values that you have inculcated and they do the right thing and this, that, and the other, right?
But you have diminishing control over your children to the point where, and eventually, of course, you die.
And hopefully long before your children do, you die.
And from that standpoint, you have no direct control.
I mean, you still exist, I guess, as thought patterns in their brain, but you're gone.
You have no control over them.
Now, the question then becomes, if you are all-powerful, so to speak, should you do everything for your offspring?
So for instance, let's say you have $100 million or, you know, some crazy sum of money, right?
You have $100 million.
And let's say that you can pay for anything that your children want.
So you are virtually all-powerful or to all reasonable limits, you are all-powerful with regards to your children's spending, right?
You can buy anything that they want at any time, or you have a billion dollars or whatever, you know, some 100 billion or whatever nonsense, right?
So you can buy anything and everything that your children want.
You are all powerful in the realm of finances.
Does that mean that you, as the parent, should pay for everything?
I would argue, no.
You, as a parent, should not pay for everything.
You as a parent, even though you are very wealthy, you as a parent should encourage your children to be economically independent, right?
So even though you're all-powerful, it is not healthy for your children for you to exercise that power.
Because if you exercise that power, they are not independent of your power.
Because if you insist on paying for everything and they take your offer to pay for everything, if that's the case, then they never grow up and they never make decisions independent of your power.
They never stop being your children in that dependent sense.
They're not earning for themselves.
They don't learn the value of money.
And all they learn how to do is to cajole, beg, complain, demand, require, whatever it is, right?
Whatever that they're doing.
And even if you make it perfectly like, here's the infinity credit card, you can buy castles in Spain if you want.
You can buy whatever, right?
You are not helping them, but you are harming them by inflicting your all-powerful finances upon them.
They never grow up.
They never become independent.
Now, in the same way, there is for children a process in the teenage years, usually in the teenage years, a process of rebellion.
And the rebellion occurs when they no longer accept what their parents say as true or valid, even if it is the case that their parents have proven it, they have to find their own way of thinking and they have to reject what their parents think and say.
So parents start out with total control.
Children go through a rebellious phase, and through that rebellious phase, they become separated, cognitively independent adults.
And even if you, as a parent, happen to be right about everything, you had to struggle to achieve that rightness, and your children also have to struggle to achieve that rightness.
And if that means rejecting your rightness for a time, that is often what the children will do.
So you start off dependent, you rebel, you become an adult.
And then a parent should not be exercising all power over you.
It would be very sad for a parent if they continued to exercise the same power over their adult children as they did over their children when those children were newborns or babies.
Because that would mean that something significantly negative from a physical standpoint had occurred to the children.
So when your baby is very little, then you have to feed them with a bottle, you have to carry them around, you have to wipe their butts, you know, all that kind of stuff.
So if you're still doing that to your daughter when she's 30, it means that she's had some horrible physical ailment that has prevented her from becoming independent.
So to continue to exercise all-powerful mechanisms over your children would be to deny them adulthood, all-powerful money, carry them around, wipe their butts, feed them with a bottle so they never have to do anything for themselves.
That would be to infantilize them.
So even though parents, with regards to size, strength, power, independence, economic, political, legal power, they are all-powerful relative to babies, the whole purpose of parenting is to diminish that power until the children can survive and flourish even without you being alive.
You don't want them to get all Hamlet and collapse into Nietzschean nihilism if you happen to die.
So in the same way, when Adam and Eve were newly created, they lived in the Garden of Eden, which of course is an analogy for infancy and toddlerhood.
And then when they hit puberty, which is when they eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they start to think for themselves.
They're not just told what is good and evil.
They think for themselves what is good and evil.
At the same time as they hit puberty, they also hit lust, right?
So then what used to be fine with regards to nakedness, right?
You bathe your toddler, they're naked, right?
But you don't bathe your older daughter or son as a parent.
So now nakedness is no longer, you know, innocence.
It is now sexuality.
And so modesty is important.
So Adam and Eve hit puberty.
They are now ashamed of nakedness and they need to cover up.
They've eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and they are expelled from the Garden of Eden, which is, of course, the parents taking care of them.
And what are they cursed with?
When they pass through puberty into sexual maturity and adulthood, they are cursed with two things.
Eve is cursed with childbirth, and Adam is cursed with labor.
And of course, that is what happens when you grow up and move out of your parents' house and you get married.
Then the man now has to provide, even though he was provided by his father, now he's a father.
He has to provide for his own children.
So he's, quote, cursed with work.
And the woman is now going to have children.
She's cursed with childbirth, with pregnancy and labor.
And that's why, I mean, one of the men of reasons why the story of Genesis is so compelling, because it is the life cycle of humanity.
So if you were a parent who, in order to prevent the child from making any mistakes in his or her life, you locked the child into the basement and you fed them, you know,
you slid the tray of food underneath the door and you took away their feces and urine and so on, then it is true, it is true that your children, as they grew and became adults, would not be out there in the world making mistakes.
But that is horrifying, right?
That that would be unlawful confinement, kidnapping.
You would basically turn your children into prisoners as they grew, and that would be a great evil.
And of course, there are parents who've done that, locked their kids in basements and so on, and that is a great evil.
No, we encourage our children to go out into the world.
Our children want to go out into the world, and they do that so that they can make their own decisions, get their hearts broken, perhaps, make mistakes, get fired, study the wrong things, and, you know, gain independence, virtue, wisdom, and morals through reasoned principles, to some degree, trial and error, all the stuff that characterizes the maturation of the human soul, so to speak.
So if God is all-powerful, why does God allow evil?
Be like saying, well, if you have a billion dollars, why do your children have jobs?
You're all-powerful.
You could pay for everything.
It's like, because that would be to cripple them.
And if God exercised his power to prevent us from doing evil, then God would be like the parent who kept his child locked up in the basement forever and ever.
Amen.
Thus preventing the child from making any mistakes or do anything wrong, but also preventing life.
Because life is about having choices and making choices according to reasoned principles.
Just as playing chess is about putting the pieces, laying out the board and following the rules.
And in chess, you might make mistakes.
You will make mistakes.
In chess, you might cheat.
The other person might cheat.
You know, when you go to the bathroom, they might move a piece.
That is inevitable.
But that's the price of freedom.
So why, if God is all-powerful, does he allow for evil?
Because evil is the result of free will.
And God will give you the rules and give you the game, but he cannot lock you in the basement forever and ever.
Amen.
He cannot take away your free will because otherwise you don't actually have any virtues.
It's like if a kid is locked in the basement, right?
If a kid is locked in the basement, do we say, well, that kid is really good because, you know, they've never shoplifted.
They've never broken anyone's heart.
They never got a girl pregnant.
They never robbed a bank.
And they never, right?
They never did anything wrong and bad.
But like, well, no, but they're not virtuous because they were just locked in a basement.
You know, if someone is in prison and they say, well, they're losing weight.
It's like, well, it's because they're, it's not because they have willpower.
It's because all they can eat is prison food.
So I don't know if that's the generic answer, but that's, you know, were I to be a priest, that would be the answer that I would provide.
Now, the counter to that, even if we accept that there's human evil, is that evil is enacted against children who are helpless, and that makes them more prone to do evil themselves.
People who are molested as children have a higher likelihood of molesting other children when they become adults.
That's not fair.
And also that accidents happen.
Accidents happen, and that's not fair or right or good.
They're not moral, but accidents happen, right?
I mean, your tire blows out for no reason and you swerve into a ditch and you get paralyzed.
And that's, you know, that's a great harm.
It's not, we wouldn't say that it's evil unless someone sabotaged your car, but saying out of nowhere, it's not evil, but it's great suffering.
So why would God inflict great suffering when he had the power to prevent it?
So there are a number of answers, which is basically that God just creates the rules of physics, and the rules of physics are inviolate, and stuff is just going to happen based upon the rules of physics.
In the same way that the people who sell you a chessboard, if you happen to leave it out in the rain, then the chessboard is going to get ruined.
That's an accident.
It's not cheating.
It's not maybe sort of carelessness, but let's say that you leave your chessboard out because you're playing a multi-day game and there's a leak in your plumbing upstairs.
It comes down through the ceiling and ruins the chessboard.
That's not cheating, but that's a negative result.
So, but the only way that God would be able to prevent all of these would be to constantly violate the laws of physics.
So if your tire happened to blow, then God would only be able to save you if he was going to violate the laws of physics and so on, right?
And if God continually violates the laws of physics, well, that's, again, interfering with people's lives and they're not being given free will.
So with regards to children being abused, and therefore it's more likely that they will become criminals as they age and so on, that is an issue.
And it's a trial and it is there to make you better and so on.
And again, it is true that children who were abused are more likely to become abusers in turn, but there's no way to prevent child abuse without stripping people of free will.
Again, somebody who's a kid who grows up and as an adult, he's just locked in the basement.
Well, he never becomes a child abuser.
He never becomes a father, right?
He never or mother, right?
So never becomes a child abuser, but he has no freedom.
So the freedom that God grants us is also the freedom to do evil and also the freedom to do evil to children.
And that is very bad, but there's no way to stop that except by exercising power over human beings and therefore stripping them of their ability to do good and follow the rules.
God, being virtuous, wants to create virtue in the world.
And the only way to create virtue in the world is to give people free will.
Give them the rules and give them free will.
The only way to have a game of chess is to give people chess pieces, to give them the rules and let them be free.
So that's the again, I don't know if that's the generic answer.
I think that's the answer that would make the most sense to me.
Now, the counter to that, of course, is that God does not give us perfect free will.
And what I mean by that is God is, according to the Bible, and this is true of almost every religious system, is that God reveals himself all the time.
It comes down to Moses.
He talks to Noah.
sends down Jesus.
And I mean, tons of examples.
There are miracles and burning bushes.
He manifests himself directly to Adam and Eve and so on.
So God, so to speak, has his thumbs on the scale, his thumb.
I could probably use both.
Doesn't need to, though.
It's all powerful.
But God is not giving human beings free will because God is coming down and doing the impossible and performing miracles and revealing himself in all his glory and you name it.
So God is not giving people free will.
So, for instance, in the, I'm sorry to use such a cheesy analogy, no disrespect intended, but in the Star Trek universe, there is something called the prime directive.
The prime directive is when you're dealing with the primitive populations as a intergalactic or interstellar space traveler, you don't show yourself.
Maybe you observe from orbit in some cloaked manner or whatever, but you don't go down and you do not interfere in the development of said creatures because you'll be screwing up their development and so on, right?
And they may misinterpret and it's just so you're going to alter how things are going to play forward.
So you keep yourself hidden.
Except Captain Kirk, who seemed to want to bang everything with tentacles and three heads like a gong.
But yeah, that's what you have to do.
You have to not interfere.
And so if it is good to not interfere with these civilizations, then you have to stay out of sight.
But of course, the reason that we know God and the reason that we know God's rules is because a God is coming down and introducing himself and he's sending the rules and he's giving people inspiration.
He's showing the punishments.
He's showing the paradise.
He's sending his only begotten son to perform miracles and walk on water and so on.
So then now there is interference.
So now there is interference.
So if the very wealthy father says, I want my kids to never know that I have any money so that they make good decisions about their finances, that's one thing.
But if he says, I want my kids to never know about my money, but then he comes down and buys them a giant house and pays off all their bills and buys them a Maserati and so on, then we have the right to be a little bit confused.
It's like, okay, so you want your kids to have free will with regards to money, but you keep jumping in to pay their bills.
So which is it, right?
So if you want people to have, if you want your kids to make their own decisions regarding money, then you can't pay their bills.
You can't spend that money on their behalf, right?
Or to benefit them in some manner.
So that's the confusing part, which is if you want us to have free will, then you can't interfere.
You've got to follow the prime directive.
But if you interfere, you can't then claim, well, the reason I don't interfere is so I can give you free will.
These are contradictory positions.
Perfect free will would be to not even know the existence of God, but then you wouldn't have any rules to follow that were divine.
And so it is kind of impossible to say.
It'd be like saying that the chess company, you have to play chess, but the only way you can play chess is to never have the pieces or the rules.
well, then you can't play, right?
So the chess company has to, quote, interfere by giving you the chess pieces and the rules.
And that means that they're, quote, interfering or making their presence known or giving you a game to play and so on.
And especially if there was a big reward or a set of punishments for these games, then that would be kind of confusing.
So it's one of the perfect free will would mean not getting interference from God.
Interference with God, which is how we have religion, means that God is willing to interfere and intervene.
But when God is willing to interfere and intervene, that means, of course, that we don't have perfect free will and therefore God is more responsible for the evils of the world.
I hope that makes sense.
Thank you for the great question.
Let me know your thoughts.
Freedomain.com slash donate.
▲
Export Selection